Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
To The Christians on the forum:)
-
24-10-2006 10:05pm#1
Comments
-
-
JimiTime wrote:1. Who is God? Does he have a name? if so, What is his name? what does that name mean?
God is three distinct hypostases in union. God the Father, God the Son Jesus the Christ and God the Spirit. He has given us many anthropomorphic images and indeed names to reference him but none are intended or capable of fully capturing who he is. An exhaustative list of the names and images would be unruly and unreadable in a forum context.Jimitime wrote:2. Who is Jesus? What does his name mean?
Jesus is the Christ, the promised and annointed one of God, predicted through the story of the Jewish people. He is God, incarnate in the form of Jewish carpenter in Palestine somewhere between 4BC and 30AD. He fulfilled the role of Rabbi and Prophet in the terms of his historical socio-economic setting. He died at the hands of the Roman authorities having been convicted of sedition and he rose again 3 days later. The meaning of these historical events is again, impossible to fully account for in this forum.
He did not only exist for the years he lived on Earth. He lived before and he lives after. He is the ever-living one, who refers to himself as Alpha and Omega. He sustains all existence and it was through him all existence came into being. It is for him that all exists. He is fully God and fully man.
Again, he has a name, like the Trinity, Jesus gives us nicknames, titles, and images alongside his name which means God-With-Us, but which was a very very common name in his day. A full account of these handles would be impossible to make here.3. What is or who is The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the 3rd person of the Trinity. The Spirit of God is the effective means of participation in the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the seal of our inheritance and the means by which we perceive that which we have not eyes to see. It (one could argue, unlike with God the Father and God the Son, that we can call "it" he or she) is a who.Jimitime wrote:3. Do you believe in the trinity? if yes, please explain what your explanation of it is.
I do. It is the basis of Christian faith. One cannot be a Christian in any meaningful sense if you deny it.
The Trinity is God. There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.
When people of all creeds insist that God must be love, they don't realise that they are demanding a God more complex than a flat monotheism. Let me rip off CS Lewis when I say that the words 'God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was
made, He was not love. Christians believe that the living dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.
Let me put it another way. The Trinity seems crazy (and I admit that!) because we all know that 1+1+1 = 3. But 1*1*1=1. That is what the Trinity is.4. Do you believe in the creation account in genesis? or is it a parable?
I believe the creation account in Genesis but I do not agree that it was intended to be an empirical explanation nor a historical account. Technically, it is definitely not a parable.5. Do you believe that when a person dies, he goes to either heaven or hell? if not, what do you believe?
I am agnostic on whether we go straight to where we go. Paul says we go to sleep and we will be woken when the turning-point in history we are in is completed.
I believe that there are no mere mortals. Everyone person I meet today has the potential to end up as a being so magnificent and glorious and loving that were I to see their end destination today, I would bury my head in the ground and think I had had an encounter with God. Equally, they have the potential to make choices in their life that leave them incapable of doing anything except devouring themselves and others, whereby if I could spy them endless aeons of time from now, I would shudder and quake with a fear, a sadness and a pity I could never recover from.
In other words, I think 2 roads are diverging in a yellow wood for all of us. Look down one as long as you could but take the narrow path.
Jimitime wrote:6. If you believe in hell, what is it? who created it? where is it? will it be there forever?
Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone. So I definitely believe in it. His most common reference (12 of the 16 times) was to call it Gehenna, which was the town dump of Jerusalem. In 2 Kings we are told that it was in this valley that worship to Molek took place in the form of brutal sacrifices of first children, rape as worship and other things which constitute almost anti-Yahwehism. When he speaks of gnashing of teeth and fires that never go out, I do not believe he is making a literal reference to hell but a literal reference to Gehenna, where wild dogs roamed and fought each other and where the refuse was reduced by constant burning. However, that doesn't mean hell isn't a place of fire. It is certainly a state of torment. Beyond that, I am agnostic. It won't apply to me. It needn't apply to anyone.7. Do you believe there will be an earthly paradise at any stage?
I firmly believe that the Biblical account of the "End times" does not depict the end of time and space but the regeneration of this time and space which God has declared to be good. Jesus says at the end of the Book of Revelations when the New Jerusalem descends from the skies, "Behold! I make all things new!"8. Do you believe in the worship of Mary? if so, why?
We ought worship only God.9. Why did Jesus have to sacrafice himself?(I know to save us, but why did we need saving?)
We were made by a relational God (see Trinity answer above) to relate to him. Sin is a technical term to refer to rebellion (it literally means missing the mark) against God. If something is disobedient to the way God has made us and the world, it is sin. (Note therefore that actual sin and the things society say are sinful need not be the same) God is perfect and pure. When we sin we tarnish the image of him, or cover up the image of him that is at the heart of our soul. Our rebellion is against him.
So if sin leads to the fracturing of the relationship we have with God and God is the source of our life, you can begin to see how sin can lead to death.
God loves us however. Each one of us with a love that is beyond comprehension. If the wages of sin is death and he doesn't want us to die because he loves us but instead wants us to be reconciled to him and we can't turn back time and take back all the mistakes we have made, then he will have to act.
But he is a just God. Perfectly just. The things we did were not just numbers in some heavenly ledgers. Lets take an extreme example of the persecution and ethnic cleansing in Darfur in Sudan. That can't just be crossed out of the Debit column and called "good" and put in the Credit column. A woman who has lost her home, her children and her parents at the hands of the Sudanese government needs justice and God's heart is with the poor and oppressed. So this perfectly Good and Just God can't just say "I forgive you". He has to make justice somewhere- equality, fairness, healing. So he pays our debt, which is death, as Jesus on the cross.
If we live a life of sin that leads to death, Jesus comes and pays that debt by dying. He lives the life we should have lived (perfect and loving) and dies the death we should have died. Now God the Just won't ask us for payment on a debt Jesus has made good so it is in this sense that his sacrifice saves us. It makes clear the path for reconciliation with God.0 -
Advertisement