Guess Tommy has never been to an Episcopal or Catholic high church. Tom, I assure you that youd leave your lunch on the curb & youd have a nose bleed after being with those characters. No, Ole Steve there is what you call a Reformed Baptist....very plain & very direct.... to use their expression, "They are straight away" & they dont take any crap.
Against my better judgment after that "
crap" aside, I will still tell you what was in "
Tommy's" head when he wrote what he did.
I was using partial irony. On this board irony seems to backfire more often than hit the mark. It is often, well,
ironic that those who are most apt to miss it when coming their way are
the very ones who use it a lot themselves.
Many times Steve has made ironic comments about my belief, positing then-in-that-case fallacies that arise, not from my Preterism, but from his unthinking caricature of my Preterism.
And, yes Steve, I know that you do not
perceive yourself as high church or traditionalist. Yet in a very real sense you are traditionalist. When it comes to opposing views from which you cannot find recourse in the Bible (as in Preterism) you resort to tradition. I called you "high church" and "traditionalist" in order to, hopefully, make you see the great gulf between your profession (and your monicker!) - and the way you treat my position.
You are a plausible Biblicist in many areas, I have no doubt. But when it comes to something like Preterism you resort to your beloved creeds as a magisterial two-by-four.
You actually, in this area, put tradition over God's word.
Consider these words of yours. The (
underlining is mine, showing where you reference the words of men. I put your actual
references to the Bible in red):
--------------------------------------------
"Where is the basis of our Christian unity or brotherhood? We can't even
recite the Apostles' Creed together. 'From thence He shall come to judge both the living and the dead.' You believe in a Christ who is never coming back. I'm sorry, but I don't believe in that Christ.
You have set yourself apart from your 'Christian friends and brothers' by espousing a doctrine that
flies in the face of all Christian creeds and confessions right from the start, including the one espoused by the Chinese house churches."
---------------------------------------------
There you see your adherence and magisterial use of the words of men underlined.
And the words in red? Hmm. There aren't any.
Ironic.