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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: PSA and Christian Identities
A.Pilgrim
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Hi Josephine! [Smile] Lamb Chopped and JohnnyS have already pointed out what I would have done – I’m pretty certain that I’m not a Calvinist, and my thinking on predestination is too complex (and possibly not robust enough) to post here – but I don’t think I’m a double predestinationist.

I must admit that I couldn’t say whether my reliance on the Bible as ‘primary reliable source’ is an axiom or a postulate (or a given) – I just recognise it as something that I take as a starting point. I guess that this comes from the tradition ( [Biased] ) that I was brought up in, and I still think that there are good enough reasons to base my own faith on it, while not being so dogmatic as to try to impose an expectation of that on others. I used the deliberately vague words ‘primary reliable source’ in the hope of being uncontentious, and avoiding a tangential debate. I’m not an inerrantist, and even if I’m sola scriptura on the substance of God’s revelation of Himself, understanding in the 21st century the text of that revelation requires linguistic and historical information that comes very much extra scriptura.

Josephine, I thought that it was a pity that your posts earlier in this thread didn’t get a perceptive response to what you were asking – not your problem, I think, as I found your posts to be entirely coherent and well-expressed – and I’m in total agreement with you when you say: “I think it's possible to get more light and less heat out of a discussion of a contentious doctrine if you try to work out the underlying beliefs”. I could say ‘Amen, sister’, except that isn’t quite my style. [Big Grin]

Making a more general response: I was brought up being taught PSA, and it came as a big surprise to join the Ship and find that there were Christians who rejected it (sometimes vehemently!) And some of the points made by those who reject it (hello Psyduck! [Smile] ) have given me pause for thought. I’ve started re-reading some pro-PSA books with a more critical attitude, and I need to read some anti-PSA books as well. (Can any shipmates recommend any, other than Steve Chalke’s?)

I’ve tried to follow the arguments in this and other threads (including dipping into the CV thread in Limbo), and I’ve come to the conclusion that a shipboard thread isn’t the best source for understanding. In order to understand the debate in the thread one needs to know the subject already, especially when much of the debate seems to consist of mutually misunderstood contradictions. I’m as much seeking after enlightenment as Josephine is, the two of us are just coming from opposite viewpoints. I don’t think I can do justice to explaining the basis for PSA, so perhaps I could suggest the book Knowing God by J I Packer (Hodder & Stoughton, 1975) which is certainly written from a PSA viewpoint. Another source is chapter 16 of: Know the truth : A handbook of Christian belief by Bruce Milne (IVP, 1998) Again, can shipmates suggest others?

I guess that I do believe that God defines right and wrong, evil and good, and that whatever He does is by that definition good. There’s a thread going on at the moment in Keryg on ‘A Sovereign God’, in which I hope to say more about this.

As for who was responsible for Jesus’s death, I refer to this passage in Acts 2: “22Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, ... 23this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”(ESV) Yes, the Romans (the lawless men) did the dirty work, but they were politically manipulated into it by the Jews, so it’s all rather complicated, and is yet another example of the paradoxical relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility.

Angus

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
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quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
However, I did find this last paragraph rather odd. I may have misunderstood you but you seem to be taking circular thinking to an extreme:

The Saints are a category of people in which I see a pattern of living I want to emulate; and once I've got this group of people I then look for a pattern to emulate.

Or have I missed something?

Sorry; I was dashing off the post, sidetracked myself with a tangent, and didn't say it at all clearly.

My point was simply that, for many questions about what I should do or how I should live, I start with the saints, because I want to be like them.

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
Kwesi I'm afraid you've lost me. Are you saying that God cannot be wrathful unless he is sinful? Otherwise, what's your problem?

Given that wrath is a sin (hardly a contentious issue given that wrath is on the list of deadly sins) then yes God can not be wrathful unless he is sinful.

The alternative is a system which says "If God orders rape and genocide then rape and genocide cease to be evil." For all the bile thrown at post-modernism for moral relativism, if you take that approach you're left with far less to work with than any post modernist. You're left unable to tell the difference between good and evil when you commit it as well as when others do unless you have perfect knowledge of their situation.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
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quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
Hi Josephine! [Smile]


Hi, Angus! Thanks for your kind words.
quote:
Making a more general response: I was brought up being taught PSA, and it came as a big surprise to join the Ship and find that there were Christians who rejected it (sometimes vehemently!) And some of the points made by those who reject it (hello Psyduck! [Smile] ) have given me pause for thought.

Isn't that fun? When I first started joining in online discussions of religious matters (in the very early 1980s), I learned so much from all the people who didn't believe all the same things I did, and hadn't grown up being taught all the same things I had been taught. I was surprised to find out how much I had in common with pious pagans and Baha'i. And I was even more surprised to find out that other Christians didn't necessarily agree with some of the beliefs that I thought just about everyone believed.

I find that PSA threads usually go too fast and furiously for me -- I just don't have the background to participate with the way they usually go, or the interest, really. They're too fast and too furious.

A book would certainly go at a better pace for me, but I'm not sure that a book explaining PSA would tell me what I want to know. I understand the doctrine well enough. It's the assumptions that are under it and behind it that I want to know.

I can't make it make sense. The retired Presbyterian missionaries that I mentioned early believed it, I think, out of a belief in the absolutely sovereignty of God. They talked about God being the potter, and people being the things that God made out of the clay. If God wanted to take one lump and make it into a work of beauty, and if he wanted to make another lump for no reason other than to smash it into bits once it was dry, who is the clay to tell the potter he can't do that? That's his right; we belong to him, and he's God, and he can do as he pleases.

I can see the logic in that. But it seems to me that when you push the sovereignty of God that far, it takes away human responsibility, and makes God the author of evil.

One way around that problem is to say that anything God does is by definition good, because he's God, and he can do it by right, and that makes it good. But saying that makes evil subjective in a way that doesn't work for me. As I said earlier, among the axioms, or postulates, or givens that I recognized early on, is that good is good, and evil is evil.

To say that, if God does something that would otherwise be evil, it's good, because God did it -- that makes about as much sense to me as saying that, if God drew a square, and called it a circle, that would make it a circle, because that's what God said it was. That's not sovereignty and power and kingship -- that's nonsense. A square is a square because it has four congruent sides and four congruent angles. That's what a square is, and if God himself called it a circle, it would still be square.

So if it's evil, it's evil, whether I do it or God does it. And I take it as a given that God doesn't do evil. He does only good.

That means that if the Bible says that God did something that is evil, then either I have misunderstood what the Bible said, or the Bible is wrong in that point. God is good. That's bedrock for me.

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Lamb Chopped
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Surely nobody still thinks that verse should be translated "kiss the son"?

1. Why not? I've not got my handy dandy references out, but I don't recall anything that takes that option forever off the table. Pray fill me in. Always interested in hearing any new insights and evidence.

2. Why the scornful tone??????? A wee bit rude, don't you think?

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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mousethief

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I was more surprised than scornful. I apologize for the tone; I wasn't trying to be haughty. Although my besetting sin is pride which sometimes comes through even when I have all the filters in position and the gaskets newly replaced. Anyway, I apologize.

The main problem with "kiss the son" is that the word translated "son" is "bar". The normal Hebrew word for son is "ben". "Bar" is Aramaic. "Bar" as "son" occurs only in Ezra, Daniel, (both post-exilic) once in Proverbs 31 (believed by many to be a codicil), and this single Psalm. "Ben" as "son" occurs in the Psalms 98 times.

Further, there is no marker for a direct object (usually "et" but "l" for the verb "kiss"), making it more likely to be an adverb ("b[a]r" as an adverb means "purely" or "sincerely"). This too is a problem, although much less of one.

The LXX renders it "receive instruction".

Douay-Reims (as you know a translation of the Vulgate, which in the OT was made from Hebrew originals (except the Apocrypha but there's no need to go there)) gives "embrace discipline" (same roughly as the LXX).

The 1917 "Jewish Bible" renders it "do homage in purity" (obviously using "b[a]r" as discussed above).

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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...

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Kwesi
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quote:
Kwesi I'm afraid you've lost me. Are you saying that God cannot be wrathful unless he is sinful? Otherwise, what's your problem?

Dinghy Sailor: My remarks were apropos of Green's observation that 'Wrath is sin's experience of God's love.' (At least that's how it's reported by A. Pilgrim). You then state: "Jesus was made to be sin as he was on the cross, see 2 Corinthians 5:21 hence yes, wrath was sin's experience of God's love on the cross." I took this to indicate you regarded this as support for PSA, and that it removed the objection that there is a distinction in PSA between a wrathful father and a loving son. Hence, after Green, the doctrine of the trinity is strenthened because both the father and the son are equally loving.

The point I was making was that Green's formulation does not convincingly support PSA, which claims that because God has been offended by human sin his wrath needed to be satisfied. Green, however, claims that wrath is 'sin's experience of God's love'. Wrath, then, is something to do with sin and sinful people, not God: it is not one of his qualities. The only way God could be wrathful in Green's definition, is by being sinful himself. Also there would need to be a love other than God for him to exhibit his wrath. While we may be happy to support Green in detaching God from his wrath, his formulation cannot be offered in support for PSA. Green's formulation, therefore, does not solve the problem of the personality difference between the father and the son in PSA theory, which remains weak from a trinitarian perspective.

Personally, I don't think the cross had anything to do with God's wrath, but had much to do with the wrath of men.

I hope that helps.

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Eutychus
From the edge
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quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Eutychus, you get me wrong when you suggest it’s my position that ‘Jesus could in some sense be seen as being put to death in order to be the object of his own wrath.’ I was really attempting to show the difficulty of PSA in sustaining the doctrine of the trinity.

Sorry, that latter insight was the one I was acknolwedging really. You summed up something others had said in a way that made sense to me. It at least shows some limits to the theory.
quote:
PSA, however, claims that God needs his wrath to be satisfied because his honour has been offended. How then can God, on Green’s formulation, be wrathful if he is not sinful? It seems to me nonsense. Perhaps I’m missing a point.
If the question here is how wrath at having one's honour offended can not be sinful, one PSA answer is that God is he (unlike anybody else) to whom all honour is due. God upholding his own honour is thus not prideful but just.

I too have been digging around in books. The one I've been looking at to revisit PSA following this thread is John Piper's The pleasures of God, which has a chapter on 'the pleasure of God in bruising the Son'. For further details (for instance, a discussion of exactly what 'propitiation', as in Romans 3:25, which Piper interprets as "appease (God's) wrath", means), the footnotes direct us to his much denser book and expanded doctoral thesis The justification of God. I haven't plucked up the courage to look in that one again yet, nor check out one of the books it tries to rebut which I also have to see if it deals with PSA at all.

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Starlight
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quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
I’ve started re-reading some pro-PSA books with a more critical attitude, and I need to read some anti-PSA books as well. (Can any shipmates recommend any, other than Steve Chalke’s?)

Here are a few:
Recovering the Scandal of the Cross by Green and Baker
Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross, ed. Baker
The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology by Rashdall
Beyond the Passion by Patterson
Paul on the Cross by Brondos

[ 14. July 2010, 07:38: Message edited by: Starlight ]

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Luigi
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Can I just add to the book list and the following to some degree put an almighty question mark next to the question of 'did God need Jesus to die?'

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by Rene Girard
Violence Unveiled - Gil Bailie (Bailie's book is another take on Girardian thinking.)


Both address the question of how embedded in our most corrupt perceptions sacrificial logic is(that the gods or God can be bought off through blood sacrifice.

They will probably be a shock to the system and suggest that much Judeo-Christian history is only one step away from Human/child sacrifice.

Luigi

[ 14. July 2010, 07:53: Message edited by: Luigi ]

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Martin60
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Kwesi - your last line - [Overused]

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Love wins

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Martin60
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Kwesi - your last line - [Overused]

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Love wins

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Jolly Jape
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quote:
originally posted by Dinghy Sailor
You could say that. However a lot of people would say that any God would be deficient, unfeeling and amoral if s/he didn't feel angry at the things his creatures do to each other, they way we spurn God and the way we've treated the world.

You see, I just don't understand this logic DS. I agree that God would be deficient if He did not do something about the things you mention, but what has anger got to do with this?

Of course, as human beings, somettimes we need anger to stir us up to do something (for example, Bob Geldof and Live Aid seems to have been spurred on by a sense of anger), but, surely, you aren't arguing that God needs any such motivation to do good.

Furthermore, for every positive outcome of anger, such as the one I have just mentioned, there are many, many more negative outcomes. The truth is that, usually, anger actually militates against doing the right thing in terms of positive outcomes. It distorts our poerspectives, with the result that the good which might have been done is not done.

Of course, we can speak of anger in metaphorical terms, (such as a surgeon being "angry" at cancer) but we don't think of the surgeon "punishing" cancer.

It is for all the above reasons that I don't think anger is a terrifically good way of translating "wrath", not necessarily because it is a poor translation in itself (though it probably is) but because it carries with it a whole lot of associated thinking which is clearly inappropriate when applied to God.

[ 14. July 2010, 08:58: Message edited by: Jolly Jape ]

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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)

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Eutychus
From the edge
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Argh. So much of this comes back to definitions.

It wasn't until I was outside full-time christian ministry and working in the business world that I discovered the possibility of people saying "I'm angry" (and presumably feeling angry), meanwhile not losing their self-control and acting to identify and/or deal with what was causing them anger. I wonder whether a lot of the disagreement on this thread doesn't have to do with perceptions of 'anger' being equal to 'losing one's temper' and acting in a resultingly disproportionate manner.

In addition, you've re-introduced another word, "punishment" (the "penal" bit of PSA). I think almost as much hinges on that as on how we understand "wrath". In French, the word "correction" has come to mean "physical beating" just as often as it means "to right what is wrong" (as in correcting spelling mistakes). That's an awful lot of semantics to unravel.

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Psyduck

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Eutychus:
quote:
It wasn't until I was outside full-time christian ministry and working in the business world that I discovered the possibility of people saying "I'm angry" (and presumably feeling angry), meanwhile not losing their self-control and acting to identify and/or deal with what was causing them anger. I wonder whether a lot of the disagreement on this thread doesn't have to do with perceptions of 'anger' being equal to 'losing one's temper' and acting in a resultingly disproportionate manner.

I think that's a very valid point, but ISTM it comes out robustly against the plausibility of PSA. It isn't "just" (!) the punishment borne by Jesus on the cross, it's the eternity of conscious punishment in hell that is the expression of God's wrath against sin, in the first instance against all of humaity in their solidarity with Adam in Original Sin, and then against those who are not saved by faith in Christ's PSA-atoning death.

An eternity of punishment, in scope as well as in temporal extension (and I know that this is a naive presentation of the implications of missing salvation under PSA, but ISTM that it's difficult to discuss the scope of an eternal hell without some acknowledgement of its unboundedness as a punishment) is hard to see as other than disproportionate to the offence of any finite being - including, I would argue, Augustine's originally-sinning Adam in his pristine human perfection, which amplifies his infraction into such a vast offence against God.

On the other hand, the colossal weight of punishment borne by Christ on the cross (and I've heard enthusiastic PSA sermons specify the grimaces and contortions far beyond the pain of mere crucifixion (!!!) supposedly evident in the dying Jesus as he bears, quite literally, the weight of the universe's sin and guilt and its allegedly condign punishment) seems to be matched to the scale of such a disproportionate punishment, because it's understood as an infinite punishment falling on, and borne by, the infinite God. Yet ISTM that the offence is still finite.

Unless you argue that any offence at all against God is infinite in scope and liability, because this is God we're talking about. I'm not trying to produce a straw man here. I will cop to pushing the logic of PSA to its limit, but it seems to me that it does that all by itself, and that it's the stopping-off places, postulated by PSAers to this singularity of sin with its infinitely strong, all-consuming gravitational field, that are arbitrary,* not my postulation of infinities. I think the infinities are there in the maths of PSA, and that they arbitrarily either ignore or misrepresent the necessarily finite nature of human sinning.

See what happens when you get me thinking about Klein Bottles? [Biased]

Here's a thought. I think (not polemically - bear with me!) that there is a default conservatism about the sort of thinking that sustains PSA, which inclines to dismiss both the idea of the applicability of the insights of other disciplines to what are postulated as Biblical, and therefore unalterable, concepts, and the idea that there can really be anything corresponding to progress in theology, including Biblical theology. I acknowledge that several people with big manifest investments in PSA struggle valiantly to accommodate new insights, and I don't want to diss that.

But I do find myself thinking; if PSA is necessarily constructed around notions of the proportional relation of finite human actions to infinite divine demands, and infinite human liability in the face of infringements of those demands, isn't it possible that advances in mathematics - since Anselm or Calvin - have led to a situation in which such understandings are no longer mathematically tenable? (I'm no kind of historian of maths, and can't substantiate that.)

Alternatively, is PSA maybe intrinsically just mathematically incoherent?

I think that an instinct that it is may power some objections to PSA, and certainly mine.

It's one thing to say that science cannot offer a valid critique of theology. Wouldn't a mathematical critique be a whole different ball-game? [Ultra confused]

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Psyduck

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# 2270

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Missed the edit window to add:

* it reminds me of Chandrasekhar's run-in with Eddington over the postulation of black holes. Chandrasekhar insisted that there was nothing beyond the neutron-star stage to prevent a star above a particular mass collapsing to a singularity. Apparently this angered Eddington, who insisted that there just had to be. I seem to remember that the junior scientist at one (maybe this) point in the argument, said "Now, see here, Eddington..." [Eek!]

And he was right. There is nothing to prevent the collapse. Just an analogy...

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

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Thanks, Mousethief. Let me do a little digging today (if they don't chain my feet to the floor). I'd like to see what else might be going on possibly in other textual streams.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Psyduck

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...and furthermore...

To link back to Melanie Klein:

I said:
quote:
this singularity of sin with its infinitely strong, all-consuming gravitational field
Unrelated to any theological perspective, Klein unearthed a locus in the human psyche for infinite, uncontained wrath, infinite punishment, and infinite fear. It's the infantile Paranoid-Schizoid position, in which, after the "fall" out of the heaven-like prenatal inter-uterine existence, the infant finds itself in a world of immeasurable and infinite threat, and itself consumed by immeasurable rage and fear, which it projects out into the universe.

It's only when the child can suddenly put bits together and distinguish a complete human being like itself that it has moved to the Depressive Position, where it can recognize a need for reparation and begin to make it.

I can't but think that, in a Kleinian template, we move from understanding God as boundless wrath and threat (PSA) to being able to respond to God as hurt and wounded by our actions - the Depressive Position - when we understand Christ on the cross as God bearing the consequences of what we have made of the world (Moral Influence).

In other words, a Kleinian Moral Influence theology recognises wrath and the boundless liability to punishment not as something in God, but as something in us, and the atonement as something that changes us, not God's attitude to us.

A Kleinian reading of the Bible would proceed analogously - and with total respect for the jagged, ill-fitting but necessary wholeness of Scripture. I for one would never countenance losing the last, very Paranoid-Schizoid, bit of Ps. 137. We need it. And the story of Uzza. It's part of the integrity of the impact of God on crazed, broken souls, human like us.

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Jolly Jape
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Euty, I wasn't so much thinking about being so angry that one loses self control (what you might call "rage"), but rather the more subtle distortions of perspective which are the rusult of being angry. Thus, we might not actually give in to the anger, and strike out at the one who has angered us, but the anger often does make us see things in a somewhat distorted light. This, in turn, leads to us acting, not necessarily irrationally, but certainly in a less rational way than if we were a dispassionate observer. In short, istm, there is too much of the "self" in anger for it to be a useful way of describing God who is, ultimately, self-less.

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:


In addition, you've re-introduced another word, "punishment" (the "penal" bit of PSA).

1 John 18

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

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Johnny S
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The main problem with "kiss the son" is that the word translated "son" is "bar". The normal Hebrew word for son is "ben". "Bar" is Aramaic. "Bar" as "son" occurs only in Ezra, Daniel, (both post-exilic) once in Proverbs 31 (believed by many to be a codicil), and this single Psalm. "Ben" as "son" occurs in the Psalms 98 times.

Further, there is no marker for a direct object (usually "et" but "l" for the verb "kiss"), making it more likely to be an adverb ("b[a]r" as an adverb means "purely" or "sincerely"). This too is a problem, although much less of one.

The LXX renders it "receive instruction".

Douay-Reims (as you know a translation of the Vulgate, which in the OT was made from Hebrew originals (except the Apocrypha but there's no need to go there)) gives "embrace discipline" (same roughly as the LXX).

The 1917 "Jewish Bible" renders it "do homage in purity" (obviously using "b[a]r" as discussed above).

Wow - I can't believe that I've never come across this before. Thanks MT. I don't think the MT is much of an issue, but the LXX certainly is.

Like LC I'll go and look into it.

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Johnny S
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quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
In short, istm, there is too much of the "self" in anger for it to be a useful way of describing God who is, ultimately, self-less.

I agree with Eutychus that I think this has a lot to do with exactly what we mean by wrath / anger or punishment.

Taking anger as example... the famous usage of 'orge' in Ephesians 4: 26 - "in your anger do not sin."

This seems to assume that it is possible to be angry and not sin, but also to assume that the two are usually closely linked.

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Johnny S
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quote:
Originally posted by Edward Green:
Where are the evangelical Arminians arguing against PSA. What is the response to them?

Sorry, I still don't get you. You said earlier that plenty of Arminians support PSA. I was agreeing. That fact alone seems to undermine the idea that it is a Calvinistic plot.

quote:
Originally posted by Edward Green:
I tend towards SA with Orthodox insights anyway and I am trying to put my finger on how the Calvinist model differs. The issue of the nature and extent of imputation seems key. In what way are many saved as if through fire? How does this relate to say Wesleyan understandings of holiness.

Read some Michael Bird, he's pretty good on imputation.

quote:
Originally posted by Edward Green:
I am interested in what holders of PSA believe about personal judgement of Christians.

I can't speak for all PSA advocates but generally I'd say something like, "Saved by faith, judged by works."

As I said earlier this idea that PSA is some huge meta-theory just doesn't square up in my experience. PSAers would clearly say that salvation is by faith alone, and that their righteousness is Christ's. However, they then read Jesus' + Paul's teaching about rewards in the new heaven and new earth and therefore they are cool with that too.

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ken
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quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
... Klein unearthed a locus in the human psyche for infinite, uncontained wrath, infinite punishment, and infinite fear. It's the infantile Paranoid-Schizoid position, in which, after the "fall" out of the heaven-like prenatal inter-uterine existence, the infant finds itself in a world of immeasurable and infinite threat, and itself consumed by immeasurable rage and fear, which it projects out into the universe...

Can we have a translation of that into English please? Reads more like Vogon from here.

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Psyduck

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Well, apart from Paranoid-Schizoid, which I explained in a post above, which Eutychus and I were discussing, which words are a problem?

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Johnny S
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(Apologies, RL intervened and I'm catching up so (x-posting aside) this will be my fourth in a row.)

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Ok. I'll put my answer very very simply this time. Jesus did not say anything about remaking the world or upsetting the status quo. He did not condemn any number of evils ingrained into society then (poverty, slavery.) He accepted it as it was. We've moved past the Romans.

[Confused] Jesus didn't upset the status quo? He wasn't an apocalyptic preacher speaking about the coming kingdom of God? Have you read a gospel?

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And I'm pointing out that he was talking to an audience at the time and leading them forward rather than utterly upturning more of their preconceptions than they could handle.

Yes. So as I have said twice before you should be easily able to show how he was pointing forward away from the idea of God as king then.


quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
I assume that this is some sort of Libertarian dig at the foolishness of making drugs illegal rather than anything to do with the Opium Wars

I know about the Opium wars. Instead of countries fighting over it in Asia now people are now abused and killed in cities all over the world. Progress?


quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
OK. If you want to redefine things as sins simply because they are now possible then of course your perceptions are going to skew. The Abortion debate is for Dead Horses.

That's right, because saying advances in technology have (alongside bringing lots of good) also increased our opportunities to do harm - is exactly my point. [Roll Eyes]

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
The WHO is probably right. We've cured most of the diseases that historically have killed people. Which more or less leaves the mind or the body coming to the end of their useful lifespan. This doesn't mean that things are getting worse. It means that they are getting better and that Mental Health is what we have left to worry about when we don't have bubonic plague, polio, influenza, et al killing off swathes of the population.

So why are suicides increasing in lots of these countries where life is supposedly so much better now? Like Australia, where I live.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
For that matter, why are you making such a difference between soldiers and civillians when historically a professional standing army is a new thing (with rare exceptions such as the Romans)?

Find a historical account of a sack of a city and read it. Then come back to me with that claim about what soldiers did to civilians. By those standards a suicide bombing is clean.

What does this prove? People did really horrible things to one another back then and they still do now.


quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Oh, that's your question. Nice of you to finally explain that you equate improvement with perfection. Simple answer. I don't. I just look back over history and see less deliberate cruelty and less acceptable cruelty over time. I do not believe perfection to be possible. And apparently you believe anything short of absolute perfection to count for nothing.

This is now getting absurd. I never brought in this assumption about perfection - you were the one who attacked PSA with regards to heaven. Apparently any God who just a angry tyrant forcing people to do stuff is unworthy.

This is what you said earlier ...

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
As for hell being a place with no justice, wrong. What hell fundamentally lacks is mercy and compassion. You do not need justice if no one does anything to hurt others and no one gets hurt. Justice is a protection against the imperfections of the world. Heaven has no need of it because nothing happens there to trigger it. Or do you believe heaven also needs a standing police force?

It was this that I was replying to. You were the one who came up with the notion that justice is a protection against imperfections.

You can't have it both ways - if you concede that coercion is necessary to make people behave better on earth why is it unworthy of God?

[ 14. July 2010, 14:32: Message edited by: Johnny S ]

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Johnny S
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I'm on a roll now!

quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
My point was simply that, for many questions about what I should do or how I should live, I start with the saints, because I want to be like them.

Sorry to be a pain about this but you still haven't answered my question.

I'm not being argumentative, I'm genuinely interested:

Who do you define as 'Saints'?

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Psyduck

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# 2270

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Ken:
quote:
...translation...yadda yadda... English... yadda yadda... Klingon...
OK: I recognize the passive-aggressive "psychobabble" move. Happy to help.

quote:
... Klein unearthed a locus
Klein found a place

quote:
in the human psyche
in the human mind, considered from a psychoanalytic standpoint, Klein being a psychoanalyst, as Wikipedia could tell us

quote:
for infinite, uncontained wrath,
for a wrath (are we OK with "wrath" seeing that it's a technical term in PSA, it seems?) that goes on for ever and doesn't have any limits

quote:
infinite punishment,
punishment that goes on forever

quote:
and infinite fear.
and fear that goes on forever.

quote:
It's the infantile Paranoid-Schizoid position,
It's the Paranoid-Schizoid position found in very youg children, literally ones who can't speak ( infans in Latin)

quote:
in which, after the "fall"
in which, after an event which, as the quotation-marks suggest, is possibly analogous to another "fall," in this case that of Adam

quote:
out of the heaven-like prenatal inter-uterine existence,
out of the pre-birth existence in the womb, which in some respects is a bit like heaven

quote:
the infant finds itself in a world of immeasurable and infinite threat,
the very small child finds itself in a total environment with so much danger that it has no idea actually how much there is, and thinks it might go on forever

quote:
and itself consumed by immeasurable rage and fear,
and having so much anger that is so much that it doesn't know how much there is, only that there's an awful lot, and being about that frightened, too,


quote:
which it projects out into the universe...
Which its mind copes with by thinking of it as not inside it, where it hurts too much, but out there in the big wide world, as the article on Klein in Wikipedia that would have explained what Paranoid-Schizoid was would also have told you...

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"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Argh. So much of this comes back to definitions.

It wasn't until I was outside full-time christian ministry and working in the business world that I discovered the possibility of people saying "I'm angry" (and presumably feeling angry), meanwhile not losing their self-control and acting to identify and/or deal with what was causing them anger. I wonder whether a lot of the disagreement on this thread doesn't have to do with perceptions of 'anger' being equal to 'losing one's temper' and acting in a resultingly disproportionate manner.

Even as someone who uses his anger in just such a way, I consider it a bad thing. It's the equivalent of using nitrous oxide in a petrol tank. Sure it gives a powerful kick and helps move things. But it doesn't do the engine any good at all.

quote:
In addition, you've re-introduced another word, "punishment" (the "penal" bit of PSA). I think almost as much hinges on that as on how we understand "wrath". In French, the word "correction" has come to mean "physical beating" just as often as it means "to right what is wrong" (as in correcting spelling mistakes). That's an awful lot of semantics to unravel.
Except that punishment is always painful and post-mortem punishment has no benefits. And I am utterly unaware of any exegesis that turns this punishment into rehabilitation.

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ken
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(To Psyduck) Still makes no sense as a model of human behaviour. Really, minds just don't work that way. Better than Freud I suppose. But still quite unbelieveable flat earther stuff. And completely irrelevant here I think.

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Psyduck

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Ken:
quote:
(To Psyduck) Still makes no sense as a model of human behaviour. Really, minds just don't work that way. Better than Freud I suppose. But still quite unbelieveable flat earther stuff. And completely irrelevant here I think.
"'Shut up!' he explained..." (Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrants, 1920)

quote:
Really, minds just don't work that way. Better than Freud I suppose. But still quite unbelieveable flat earther stuff.
You really don't like this stuff, do you?!?!? [Big Grin] [Killing me]

[ 14. July 2010, 15:01: Message edited by: Psyduck ]

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Eutychus
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quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
Unless you argue that any offence at all against God is infinite in scope and liability, because this is God we're talking about.

Psyduck, please bear in mind I'm not defending PSA. I'm not sure what I think (more of which later*). That said, most of the books I have to hand here do. Regarding that point, in The Pleasures of God in this context John Piper unequivocally states
quote:
the righteousness of God is his unswerving commitment to uphold the worth of his glory,and that the desecration of his glory can indeed be "made up" by a just punishment - a corresponding loss of glory. An eternal hell is not unjust, because the sin of man against an infinitely glorious God is deserving of an infinite punishment
So Piper at least defends this very position.
quote:
Alternatively, is PSA maybe intrinsically just mathematically incoherent? I think that an instinct that it is may power some objections to PSA, and certainly mine.
I've heard many people object the opposite - that it's too mathematical.

*Digging through these books made me think again about mirrors and credulity. When I was in NFI I devoured everything written by John Piper (often recommended and once a guest speaker for them) available. Inasmuch as I have a theological understanding of PSA, it comes from Piper. It didn't correspond to my theological roots in many ways, but I remember being swept along by his arguments, drawn to worship God and getting high on his (as I saw it) soaring theological insights.

I became suddenly and completely disenchanted with NFI for reasons I won't rehash here. A knock-on effect was a sudden and complete disenchantment with the attendant theology. I've tried Piper again a couple of times, and all I can see is his harshness, smugness, and the gaps in his logic (shifting for instance from describing 'propitiation' as 'averting' God's wrath to 'appeasing' God's wrath).

I guess that's why I'm now so sceptical about being caught up in following others' teachings; Psyduck, your enthusiasm for Klein reminds me of mine for Piper (although of course you may be less naive than me!). As the internet meme has it, "I want to believe"...

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Psyduck

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# 2270

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Eutychus:
quote:
Psyduck, please bear in mind I'm not defending PSA.
Sorry - I tend to post in "written spoken English"; "you" here means "one"!

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Eutychus
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quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
Taking anger as example... the famous usage of 'orge' in Ephesians 4: 26 - "in your anger do not sin."

Goodness, what a lot of cross-posts! I can remember why I don't usually get into these threads...

I've grabbed the above post as a starting point to look at some terminology.

anger/wrath: Johnny S's point needs addressing. Not all anger is sin, contra whoever keeps saying it's one of the deadly sins (not in my Bible [Biased] ). I learned that anger is primarily about a perceived injustice. If the perception is spot-on, might it not be assumed that the anger is righteous? And 'appeasing the wrath' would then mean the injustice is righted? (btw I reiterate [but do not necessarily subscribe to!] Piper's view, consistent with this, that hell is fundamentally just, not unjust).

punishment: Evensong, thanks for the verse. But I don't think it says anything directly about what's happening on the cross, does it? The nearest thing I could find offhand was Isaiah 53 where it talks about "the punishment which brought us peace was borne by him"; in my French Bible it says the Hebrew word there is for "correction". Is there anywhere in Scripture where punishment rather than correction is clearly related to the cross? (this has big implications for the prison chaplaincy part of me!). Justinian, that question goes to you too. Have the PSA people just made the 'punishment' aspect up, or is there some good exegetical basis for it?

Psyduck: the great thing in French is that we use on for 'one' in current language. Very useful for evading responsibility, as in "on a cassé la fenêtre..."

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Psyduck

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# 2270

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Eutychus: I was going to digest your post and respond to it later (just about to go out) but TBH there isn't much I would argue with there, and when I do re-read (which I certainly will) it will be to see how much of your trajectory I can retrace. It's very interesting.

quote:
I guess that's why I'm now so sceptical about being caught up in following others' teachings; Psyduck, your enthusiasm for Klein reminds me of mine for Piper (although of course you may be less naive than me!).
This is fair comment, though I'm actually more of a Freudian than a Kleinian! [Eek!] [brick wall]

The value of Klein's thought here, ISTM, is as follows.

If one is prepared to consider that PSA is neither a straightforward lift from the Bible nor a set of utterly compelling deductions which sum up the core of the Biblical logic of salvation, Klein, ISTM, suggests where the core of PSA might come from. A fundamental reality which is violent, capricious and untrustworthy, and fuelled by a boundless rage such as properly to inspire boundless fear, can be found inside our own heads,a nd in a stratum of the makeup of our own personalities.

Klein's understanding is based on very extensive and pioneering work into the psychology of young children; Klein herself moved to Britain to practice, and contributed powerfully to the evolution of British psychoanalysis. If Ken is junking Klein, he's junking a lot more than maybe he realizes.

But hey! If it makes his universe more comfortable...

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
Well, apart from Paranoid-Schizoid, which I explained in a post above, which Eutychus and I were discussing, which words are a problem?

Odd. I understood the whole thing, and I'm hardly a scholar of psychology.

quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And I'm pointing out that he was talking to an audience at the time and leading them forward rather than utterly upturning more of their preconceptions than they could handle.

Yes. So as I have said twice before you should be easily able to show how he was pointing forward away from the idea of God as king then.
Of course. He was pointing to the idea of God as father. Indeed, as daddy. One's relationship with a loving father is quite different from one's relationship with a distant (and tyrannical) king.

quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
In other words, a Kleinian Moral Influence theology recognises wrath and the boundless liability to punishment not as something in God, but as something in us, and the atonement as something that changes us, not God's attitude to us.

The bit I put in italics is very much bog-standard Orthodox teaching, although we don't understand it in the Kleinian way you have put forth. I'm not entirely certain I understand what the "Moral Influence" model is, so I can't be sure we clock together there. I believe, if I'm using the words correctly, we would describe the atonement as more of an ontological change, than a moral influence.

quote:
Originally spouted by John Piper:
the righteousness of God is his unswerving commitment to uphold the worth of his glory,and that the desecration of his glory can indeed be "made up" by a just punishment - a corresponding loss of glory. An eternal hell is not unjust, because the sin of man against an infinitely glorious God is deserving of an infinite punishment

This reminds me of a self-important potentate (king of someplace, governor, burgomeister) who is looking at himself in the mirror and adjusting his eyeliner when a peasant in the street below does something that makes a loud noise which causes the potentate to smear his makeup. So he has the peasant killed. Can God have a loss of glory? It's asinine. Why should anything a finite ant do cause any loss at all in an infinite God? Delicate little thing, isn't he? Really this "god" comes across nothing so much as a self-important fop.

The problem is that God isn't nearly so hung up on his "glory" or "sovereignty" as his supporters suppose. This is the God who condescended to become man -- kenosis. The PSA "god" is like VGer in the first (and execrable) Star Trek movie, that keeps repeating in a shrill voice, "obey me! obey me!"

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Jolly Jape
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quote:
originally posted by Eutychus
anger/wrath: Johnny S's point needs addressing. Not all anger is sin, contra whoever keeps saying it's one of the deadly sins (not in my Bible ). I learned that anger is primarily about a perceived injustice. If the perception is spot-on, might it not be assumed that the anger is righteous? And 'appeasing the wrath' would then mean the injustice is righted?

But that just emphasises my point that anger is a very counter-productive translation of "orge". It's no good keep banging on about anger being potentially righteous. It's just not the way that people understand it. Furthermore, it's not the way that advocates of PSA normally understand it, witness the reluctance to use a less loaded word such as "indignation". They clealy have some investment in maintaining the common understanding of anger.

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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)

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Eutychus
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quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
They clealy have some investment in maintaining the common understanding of anger.

I can certainly see some perverse benefits of maintaining such a stance, but I genuinely don't know whether the theology requires it.

As to "indignation", to me that smacks of 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells', which is possibly worse not better (though it perhaps suits mousethief's pastiche above).

What do you understand by "in your anger do not sin"?

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Eutychus
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Actually, I've just found Piper quoting Dabney on God's "moral indignation"...

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Jolly Jape
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
They clealy have some investment in maintaining the common understanding of anger.

I can certainly see some perverse benefits of maintaining such a stance, but I genuinely don't know whether the theology requires it.

As to "indignation", to me that smacks of 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells', which is possibly worse not better (though it perhaps suits mousethief's pastiche above).

What do you understand by "in your anger do not sin"?

Hmmn, maybe there's a point about the mythical newspaper complainant, but indignation is, at least, construable as something which has an emphasis on causing action to remedy the wrong or injustice, rather than just getting mad with the perpetrator. Incidentally, I think that to talk of moral indignation is to miss the point. God, it seems to me, is concerned with righting wrongs, rather than the moral position per se.

"In your anger, do not sin" - do not let your zeal for righteousness lead you to forget that we have to "love our neighbour as ourselves". How about that?

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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)

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mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

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quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
Hmmn, maybe there's a point about the mythical newspaper complainant, but indignation is, at least, construable as something which has an emphasis on causing action to remedy the wrong or injustice, rather than just getting mad with the perpetrator.

At which point damnation to eternal torment falls completely flat. It's not required to remedy wrongs or injustices.

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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...

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Eutychus
From the edge
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quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
"In your anger, do not sin" - do not let your zeal for righteousness lead you to forget that we have to "love our neighbour as ourselves"

So 'orge' = 'zeal for righteousness'? (I remember a discussion on the meaning pages back, but I admit I wasn't paying attention at that point).

If that's defensible, why not? But I as far as I can see, that would fit into the way Piper views PSA perfectly. God acts to restore righteousness and defend his own honour. The death of Christ is seen as a means of satisfying God's zeal for righteousness (somehow 'dealing' with it rather than 'sweeping it under the carpet') and demonstrating the enormous value of his own glory.

Please don't shoot the messenger!

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Jolly Jape
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Euty, I have difficulty with the concept of God "defending his own honour". It seems so at odds with Jesus, who willingly subjected Himself to humiliation. Now, if Piper were to define God's honour as His humiliation, (just as His power is most manifest in weakness) then I think he would be onto something.

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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)

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Eutychus
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Well, IIRC it's central to Piper's thinking. God rightly delights in his own honour, glory, name and fame; it is because his people have his name invoked on them that he is committed to them; actions are performed "for his name's sake" and Jesus, in going to the cross, seeks to bring glory to the Father. Piper sees God's commitment to his own honour as foundational to just about everything.

[ 14. July 2010, 18:48: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Boogie

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# 13538

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Why would the creator and sustainer of the universe need anyone to defend him?

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Garden. Room. Walk

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
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quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
My point was simply that, for many questions about what I should do or how I should live, I start with the saints, because I want to be like them.

Sorry to be a pain about this but you still haven't answered my question.

I'm not being argumentative, I'm genuinely interested:

Who do you define as 'Saints'?

The saints are the people who have achieved theosis. The holy ones, the people who, when you see them, you know that you're seeing more than just them; you're seeing God in them and through them.

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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shamwari
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With due respect Josephine the NT definition of a "saint" is one who has responded to the call of God and has thereby become separated from the world to God.

The issue of any kind of moral / spiritual attainment is irrelevant.

The hebrew first fruits dedicated to God were designated as "holy" (= saint) simply because they were "separated to".

Theosis is a state of holiness way beyond that.

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Jolly Jape
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quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Why would the creator and sustainer of the universe need anyone to defend him?

Well, why indeed? And why would he be so self absorbed as to want that?

In fairness to Piper, his argument is a bit more nuanced, but I still think it founders on the rock of the revealed character of Jesus. If the Father is so radically different from the Son, hoiw could Jesus say, in any meaningful way, "He who has seen me has seen the Father?

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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)

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Psyduck

Ship's vacant look
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Eutychus:
quote:
Well, IIRC it's central to Piper's thinking. God rightly delights in his own honour, glory, name and fame; it is because his people have his name invoked on them that he is committed to them; actions are performed "for his name's sake" and Jesus, in going to the cross, seeks to bring glory to the Father. Piper sees God's commitment to his own honour as foundational to just about everything.

I suspect that's an accurate reading from the little I know. I've invoked more than enough psychological terminology here already, but i can't let this pass without writing the word "narcissism." And maybe, in the 12-Angry-Men spirit of "running it up the flagpole and seeing who salutes it" preceding that with the word "pathological."

And of course, in doing so, I'm absolutely not insinuating anything about the people who adhere to PSA. It's the character of the Gopd PSA presumes I am interested in, and concerned by.

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Psyduck

Ship's vacant look
# 2270

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Wikipedia on NPD
From Wikipedia:
quote:
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder... as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy."

The narcissist is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, and prestige. [It] is closely linked to self-centeredness.



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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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