Why do we need salvation?

Since several members of this board have recently accused me of being a liberal, and Hillclimber stated just yesterday that my theology is “complete and utter nonsense,” I am posting here for your convenience a summary of my theology,

The Word of God – I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation, and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

The Trinity – I believe in one God, Creator and Sustainer of all things, eternally divine existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; I believe that these are equal in every distinct perfection and they execute distinct but harmonious offices in the work of creation, providence, and redemption.

God the Father – I believe in God the Father: an infinite, personal Spirit, perfect in holiness, wisdom, power, and love. I believe that He concerns Himself mercifully in the affairs of humanity, that He hears and answers prayer, and that He saves from sin and death all who come to Him through Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ – I believe that Jesus Christ is God's eternal Son, who has precisely the same nature, attributes, and perfections as God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. I believe further that He is not only true God, but true man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. I also believe in His sinless life, His substitutionary atonement, His bodily resurrection from the dead, His ascension into heaven, His priestly intercession on behalf of His people, and His personal, visible, premillennial return from heaven.

Holy Spirit – I believe in the Holy Spirit, His personality and His work in regeneration, sanctification, and preservation. His ministry is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, to implement Christ's work of redeeming the lost, and to empower the believer for godly living and service.

Man – I believe God originally created persons, male and female, in the image of God and free from sin. I further believe all people are sinners by nature and choice and are spiritually dead. I also believe that those who repent of sin and trust Jesus Christ as Savior are regenerated by the Holy Spirit.

Salvation – I believe in salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I further believe that this salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Jesus Christ on the cross, and is received by faith, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual. I further believe salvation results in righteous living, good works, and proper social concern.

The Church – I believe that the Church is the spiritual body of which Christ is the head. I believe that the true Church is composed of all persons who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit. I believe that this body expresses itself in local assemblies whose members have been immersed upon a credible confession of faith and have associated themselves for worship, for instruction, for evangelism, and for service. I believe the ordinances of the local church are believer's baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper. I also believe in the interdependence of local churches and the mutual submission of believers to each other in love.

Separation of Church and State – I believe that each local church is self-governing in function and must be free from interference by any ecclesiastical or political authority. I further believe that every human being is directly responsible to God in matters of faith and life and that each one should be free to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.

Christian Conduct – I believe that the supreme task of believers is to glorify God in their life and that their conduct should be blameless before the world. I further believe that they should be faithful stewards of their possessions and that they should seek to realize for themselves the full stature of maturity in Christ.

The Last Things – I believe in the bodily resurrection of the saved and lost, the eternal existence of all people either in heaven or hell, in divine judgment, rewards, and punishments.


I am not a Christian fundamentalist extremist, but I am NOT a liberal.

 

Craig, if you didn't mean it sarcastically, then I appologize for editing it. My fault...misunderstanding......

 

My answer was very simple and very clear. I have taught students from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and also a number of English-speaking African nations, with no serious difficulty, so the difference in our cultures is probably not the cause of the communication breakdown here. Perhaps there is another difference in our backgrounds that makes it difficult for me to get my ideas across to you. Nonetheless, as God is my witness, I have honestly and faithfully answered your question to the best of my ability. Therefore I shall leave the matter in the hands of God.

 

Would you please clarify? To what matters does the word of God speak? To what matters does in not speak?

 

"The Christian evolutionist has two separate departments in his head, the science department and the theology department. If I ask a question that cuts across both departments, it doesn't compute. It's like a dalek blowing a fuse when confronted with an act of altruism, like the Dr. Who girl throwing herself in front of Dr. Who and saying "Don't kill him, kill me". IT DOES NOT COMPUTE! IT DOES NOT COMPUTE! Smoke and flames come out of the dalek's head and all the wiring falls out."

I do not think that there is much about any of this that screams "Does not compute" in either my head nor Craig's head.

Where the lack of understanding comes is between those who think as we do and those who think as you do.

The Bible is truthful in all area which it addresses. But that does not mean that it addresses all areas. The Bible has a purpose. It tells us the history of the relationship between God and His people along with a few other things such as prophecy and some poetic literature and such. It is meant to convict us of our need for salvation, it is meant to guide us in how to achieve salvation and it is meant to instruct us in how to live our lives. (Yes, that is a gross generalization but I think the point is clear.)

The Bible does not address science nor is it intended to be a scientific text nor is it overly concerned with science. Look to the account of the day the sun stood still for Joshua for an example. The literal text says the sun stood still. From our observations of how the solar system works, we realize that the actual process must have been that the earth ceased spinning. If the sun were to literally stop moving, the effects would not be what was described. But the important part is the miracle that God provided for His people, not the details of what actually happened.

The Bible does not address string theory or special relativity or the kinetic theory of gasses. Nor does it, IMHO, address inflation nor plate tectonic nor evolution.

Some of us see the same kind of logic wit hthe creation. The Creation itself shows us that the literal reading cannot be true. Yet the Bible IS true. Therefore the logical conclusion is that the creation account is not meant to give a step by step process for the creation of the world but to instead reveal spiritural truths that God deamed important. The first is to establish Himself as the ONLY god and as the creator. This makes a lot of sense if you consider the beliefs of the time and of the region and that God want to draw a clear distinction between Himself, the true living God, and the false gods that were worshipped. It establishes Man as having a special relationship with God, different than the rest of creation, due to Man being given a soul and thus made in the image of God. It also shopws that Man was unable to live up to this resposility, that Man has a sinful nature and will naturally rebel against God, and that Man is in need to salvation through the grace of God. And thus it establishes the basis for the rest of what we see.

For some of us, this means no conflict. We turn to the Bible for what it claims expertice on and we turn to science for what it claims expertice on. In a real search for the truth, this is the only logical way to proceed.

Others do see a conflict. I can understand why you feel that a literal 6 day creation is a requirement for your faith even if I wholly disagree with it. Too bad you cannot extend the same courtesy.

I, personally, am quite happy to leave those who believe in a 6 day recent creation based soley on their faith and literal reading of the Bible to that belief. I applaud their sincere faith. While I disagree, it is not a matter of salvation and there is no reason to cause conflict. I will often tell such poeple this and suggest that we both go along our ways in this matter. In fact, this is the reason that very few people who know me in flesh and blood actually know how I feel. I choose to not cause division. I sat the other day and listened to the woman in the office next to mine tell me how she was sending her son to private school so he would not be taught evolution and never said a thing.

Where I do have a problem is with those who venture beyond this and say that the physical evidence either points to a young earth or denies evolution. It does not! There are plenty of anecdotes out there of those who have lost their faith when finally confranted with the truth of biology and geology and astronomy. They feel like church leaders have lied to them on this and wonder what else might fall into that category. In the same vein, there are many people who reject Christianity out of hand because they see anything that claims that relity is wrong cannot be right.

Worse, I find that the attempts at "creation science" are little more than misrepresentation at best and downright lies and worse. They are unChristian and hurt the witness of all Christians when seen by those who do not believe.

That is why I am willing to argue against YE. I find it a destructive cancer on the chirch. This is also why you will find that when you bring up the subject, the discussion will invariably turn to the facts of the science. For dispite all your rantings, if reality is against you, you just are not correct. Even on this thread, you had people you agree with who chimed in about evolution being false before anyone ever tried to defend it. So even your side goes straight to that tactic, too.

Fortunately, we do have the record of creation to observe and the God provided intellect to figure it out. And the answer is undeniably that the universe is old and that all life on this planet is related through common descent.

And some of us have nothing spiritual that "Does not compute" with regard to that.

 

For goodness sake UT, OPEN YOUR EYES!!!

Creation doesn't "reveal" anything in and of itself. That is ascribing an intelligent trait to nature. Nature is interpretted by naturalists to be billions of years old because the presuppose that the supernatural was not the cause.

None of the things you say you have faith in could have been recognized as the result of a miracle by looking at the end product. The wine looked and tasted like wine that had passed through natural processes. Lazarus' body functioned as if it had never been dead. Jesus appeared in the room as if He had used a door. The leper's skin looked as if it were the result of natural processes.

A scientist could have explained the process of how these realities came about naturally but they didn't come about naturally.

All of these things we believe as a direct result of what the Bible tells us. If it tells me that Jesus did real miracles, really rose from the dead, really has a home for me in a supernatural place called heaven, etc... and I believe those things, I find no difficulty whatsoever with creation ex nihilo. </font>[/QUOTE]Then propose the better interpretation that better accounts for our observations in the creation.</font>[/QUOTE] God spoke it into existence exactly as He said He did.

Why not? If there had been equal funding and ability to convey a message to Germans who didn't buy into Hitler's expansion of naturalism then millions of people might have been spared.

There are many examples where scientific convention has stood in the way of real progress towards truth through financial and other means.

Funds only go to researchers who give answers that conform to evolution at all applicable points.

Apparently you can't. If someone gathering data doesn't expect a result because it conflicts with their naturalistic presuppositions then it may be discarded as an anomaly, suppressed, ignored, etc. In the article I cited, a scientist admitted that there might be more soft tissue in fossil finds but that it isn't sought since it isn't expected. When everyone looking at the evidence to determine its value believes that the evidence must conform to or be explained by the ToE then we have no guarantee of objectivity at all.

Actually, I don't. I accept the only eyewitness account that we have then look at the ToE to see a) if it is independently probable (it isn't) and b) if it agrees with the eyewitness account that we have (it doesn't).

I have haggled with you and presented some alternatives but all that is really academic.

If a man said that a gully was the result of a ditch washing out then all the fancy natural force only explanations one might imagine are moot.

Evolution has complexity because it has to. Some evolutionists even admit that it is a fragile theory that raises many more questions than it ever answers. It hinges on highly speculative, highly improbable, unobservable, unrepeatable circumstances being true in a precise formula. The honest atheist evolutionist will acknowledge that it is believed only because the alternative is rejected.

Not nearly as much as the naturalists have for attempting to disprove the Creator and thereby negate His authority.

You say that you have "faith" in the miracles of the NT. Where does that faith go when God's Word tells us that God spoke the universe into existence by an act of direct will? This has every bit as much proof as any of the NT miracles... and its "disproofs" are based on the exact same assumption- it is not explainable by naturalism.

 

Then it is or is not subject to the higher critical theories that say it should be evaluated by the same rules as ancient mythology?

Is it "literature" or is it a book completely of divine origin?

If the latter, please show us anywhere that God expressed the very important premise that Genesis 1-11 was meant allegorically.

 

This is the biggest problem that I see for those who try to fit evolution into the biblical context.

We can argue science all day, each side giving credible evidence supporting their bias/belief. For every argument for; there is an equally valid argument against.

Evolution, IMHO presents a tremendous theological problem in trying to reconcile what the bible tells us about the nature of God, with a concept of "natural evolution".

As I posted previously, if evolution is true, then we serve a God who would allow the death and suffering of countless species before sin and death entered into the world through Adam. This act by its very nature would strike to the heart of a God that we are told is good; that pronounced His creation "good".

I have seen the statement advance here that "plants died when eaten", to which I would respond...not necessarily. I don't think eating an orange kills the tree......

There is a certain gap in logic that I can not seem to grasp, in applying the miracle working of God in one instance and denying His ability to work miracles in the next. Additionally I find a certain lack in logic when reasoning that the bible is true, but only upon subjects to which it addresses itself. Here we have a book that purports to give us the answers to creation, the nature of God, the fall and salvation of Man, that testifies of itself that it is true........but at the sme time is limited in scope?
If God can send fire from heaven (not a natural occurance) to consume a sacrifice, altar, water, dust and stone; if He can bring forth a dead man from the tomb (again not a natural occurance), what right have we to say that He did not make the sun stand still? Or create His universe in 6 days? To do so IMHO opinion is to express a level of human arrogance on par with none else, to state that our supposed learning is greater than the wisdom/power of the creator God....

There needs to be (once again my opinion) a logical consistency applied to these events, otherwise we must ask ourselves "which parts of the bible do I discard" (perhaps those that conflict with our pre-conceived ideas,or conflict with our understanding?)...Why then believe any of it at all?

Once we start trying to use what I call a "rubber bible" (stretch to fit) we have reduced God to the level of man's understanding, instead of accepting that God....is God.

 

I believe that a God who could not create, cannot resurrect nor violate the laws of nature in any way. If He is not the creator of nature then how can He be truly Sovereign over creation in anything less than a despotic sense?

I believe that a God that would give a narrative of how He created the world and verify in various places in scripture including quotes from God in flesh that He intended for that narrative to be understood as a narrative... but who in actuality used entirely different and contradictory means to create the world is not worthy of trust.

BTW, Evolution IS different from and contradictory to creation ex nihilo.

 

Mike G.,

I am having a great deal of difficulty understanding how anyone could confuse the Bible with a textbook on the evolution of the flight muscles in grasshoppers. As UTEOTW has pointed out, the study of evolution belongs to the realm of science, and the study of salvation belongs to the realm of religion and faith. The two realms are mutually exclusive, and when they are mixed together the consequences are all too frequently a loss of faith in both God and the Bible.

However, when both of these two realms are studied within their own confines, the evolutionist can learn more about God and what He has done for us through the atonement of Christ, and the religious man can learn more about God and how He created the heavens and the earth.

When, on the other hand, these two realms are confused with each other, confusion about both science and the Bible is the result, and the outcome is the stifling of science and the mockery of the Bible.

I grew up believing that Christianity was a religion of fools because the only Christians that I met were extremely naïve and self-deceived individuals who knew almost nothing about either science or the Bible but who thought that they had studied both. Were it not for some very loving and radically committed Christians in an Assembly of God Church who faithfully prayed for my salvation and who went to great lengths to manifest the truth of the gospel to me through their own lives, I hate to think what would have become of me. Rather that argue with me about my evolutionary views, they loved me and allowed Christ to love me through them at a high personal cost. They showed me through their own lives that evolution was not an issue—but that my sin was an issue and that it was separating me from God. And before these people came into my life, I didn’t even believe that there was such a thing as sin. But when I got to know the people in that church, especially the high school kids, I saw in them a purity and a holiness that cast so much light that my own personal wretchedness became obvious even to me.

If, however, they would have told me that evolution and faith in Christ for salvation are mutually exclusive, I would certainly have chosen evolution over ignorance, superstition, and foolish nonsense.

Some people take offence when I use the expression Christian fundamentalist extremists, but that very group of individuals is responsible for the damnation of very many souls who otherwise could have been reached for Christ. I know that from personal experience as both a sinner who was saved through the ministry of Christian fundamentalists who knew better, and from experience as the former pastor of an ultra-conservative, evangelical church.

 

Mike G. wrote,

I think it is about time for some people in this thread to give this issue some study.

Even just a few courses in soteriology at a competent seminary or university would clear up this matter for you. None of the evolutionists participating in this thread are suggesting that God is unjust or that God created a defective world and then blamed us for all the problems. I have gone very far out of my way to be respectful of you and polite to you, but it does not look to me as though you began this thread because you wanted to learn more about the Bible from us, but because you wanted to argue for your own personal ideas that neither make any sense nor have any academic foundation. There is a very fine commentary on the Epistle to the Romans that was continuously in print for more than 100 years. I believe that it is now out of print, but both new and used copies are still for sale on the Internet. The commentary of which I write is the following:

W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam. The Epistle to the Romans. The International Critical Commentary series. First edition, 1896, ninth edition 1904. Published in England and elsewhere by T. and T. Clark Limited; published in the United States by Charles Scribner’s Sons. 450 pages.

I have studied hundreds of commentaries on this epistle, and in my personal opinion this one is the best that there is, overall. The first volume of a much more comprehensive (927 pages) commentary on Romans by C. E. B. Cranfield in the same series of commentaries was published in 1975, and the second and final volume was published in 1979, but because of the exceptionally high quality of the original commentary on Romans in this series, both of them were published side by side for 25 years. My understanding of Romans does not come from this commentary, but this commentary will give you a good grasp of my understanding of Romans.