Hot answers tagged theology
17
You're reading way to much into this :)
In order to appreciate this song, I think you need to allow for variation of meaning in the English language. Understanding some songs even require that we grant them some poetic licence, although I think we should treat those with cation because consciously or otherwise those do tend to cloud our theology. However in ...
16
Reasoning can take you a long way. Just look at this community. Being a part of the StackExchange network, a good percentage of the members (including myself) come from a highly technical, scientific background, and would likely revolt at the thought of rationality being incompatible with Christian faith.
The problem is that reasoning is only a process. ...
16
Answers in Genesis writes about this topic a lot. Their primary arguments are:
The Genesis narrative seems to be written as a historical one, and not allegorical. Adam and Eve are treated as historical figures, having offspring, a genealogy, and death. Thus treating it otherwise would be poor hermeneutics.
The Genesis account of the order of things ...
12
The reason that something may be considered a sin primarily because it hurts your relationship with God. When God has ordered the world in a certain way, or decrees that certain things are not to His will, then going against it is a sin. A sin isn't something that is bad for others. It's bad for ourselves. So to judge something as sinful because it hurts ...
10
While I'm not 100% certain I understand your question. If you're asking what I think; Jesus implied that the will of the Father, Son, and Spirit are separate, as He spoke a lot about the Father's will.
John 6:40, NIV
For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the ...
9
A few points:
The "bunch of kids who made fun of Elijah's bald spot" were not a bunch of kids, (the KJV's translation is quite unfortunate here,) but a bunch of youths (meaning teens or young men.) It was Elisha, not Elijah, that they were making fun of, and laughing at him for being bald wasn't their offense. This incident took place soon after Elijah's ...
9
Biblical and systematic theology are two different ways of studying the Bible. The main difference is what the theologies study.
Biblical theology is focused on studying a portion of the Bible and how that relates to the rest of the Bible. An example may be specifically studying a portion of Isaiah. The person studying may look back at what led up to one ...
9
The term is typically applied by Dispensational Theologians when referencing Covenant Theology.
Dispensationalists believe that God is relating to the church during the church age, which we're in right now, however, he related to the Jews during the Mosaic period, using the Mosaic law. They don't believe, however, that the church has replaced Israel, but ...
9
The kind of comparison you are suggesting is not going to work for a number of reasons. The most prominent one is a huge difference in job description between those that different denominations consider church leaders.
The Catholic church, for example, ordains priests based on several years of college-level education, as well as other requirements, academic ...
8
I'm focusing here on the aspect that you are finding it possible to relate to; namely Deism.
Deism is, in the conventional form, the "light the blue touch paper and retire" deity - i.e. that sets up the initial conditions, and then bows out. And this is where it gets interesting, since Deism traditionally breaks the link with all supernatural activity, and ...
8
Isaiah 1:18 (ESV)
“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins
are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are
red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
The Christian God is a God of order, and He is the author and sustainer of all of creation, which, I believe, explains the transcendental ...
8
This may be redundant, but from a Sola Scriptura/Biblical Literalist/Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist view...
Is Christianity defined by the Bible?
If so, is belief in the Bible the most important (or foundational) belief in Christianity? Is it the basis of Christianity?
Yes. Christianity is the faith in the God of the Bible. ...
8
Actually, this symbol is a "tau-rho," not a "chi-rho." Instead of being a shortened form of the word "Christ" (Χριστος), generally speaking the Tao-Rho is thought to be a shortened form of the words "cross" and "crucify" (σταυρος, σταυροω). Larry Hurtado has speculated that it may also be the first pictoral representation of Jesus on a cross (the loop of the ...
8
There is more to polytheism than simply believing in multiple divine beings. One of the hallmarks of polytheism is multiple gods, each with their own domain and their own agenda.
To use a culturally familiar example, in the Greek pantheon, Zeus was the father of the gods, god of the sky and thunder and lightning. Hera was his consort, and she was ...
7
Historically, there have been four sources of Theology:
Scripture
Tradition
Reason
Experience
Each of these is a tool that we can use to answer questions about God, and each has its pros and cons. The best theology draws from all of these sources.
A good resource for understanding the pros and cons of reason as a source of theology is the "Theology ...
7
From a Biblical perspective, the Egyptians would have descended from Noah, but not from Abraham. Genesis 10 is considered the "Table of Nations" in the Bible as it details how the sons of Noah began to populate the earth.
The tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is also a very significant event. God had commanded Noah (like He had Adam) to fill the earth. The ...
7
Here's the verse in question:
Genesis 2:16-17 NIV
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any
tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will
certainly die.”
The opportunity to live forever
What I find most interesting is that God didn't ...
7
I hope that I can help here.
A couple months ago I got engaged. I prayed a lot about the decision and felt like it was a good move in my life. One that would be hard but would be worth it. Well, 2 weeks ago my fiancee broke up with me. That was one of the hardest days of my life. And it would of been so easy to say, "I prayed; it felt like a good choice, I ...
7
The following recent books are very popular and explore the topic. I have read the first two and heard some sermons from the third.
Books:
The Attributes of God by A. W. Tozer
Knowing God J.I Packer
The Attributes of God by A.W. Pink
Tozer's sermons are easily found, for example here.
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=8130752728
Common ideas ...
7
Rob Bell is identified with a Emergent Church despite not self identify as a member of the emergent movement. However, he tends to advocate many of the ideas of that group. Case in point, Love Wins, which came out last year, was hugely controversial, since it was putting forward a view on the nature of hell which is not held by many evangelical Christians. ...
7
Christopher Wright authors the book Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament to help modern day Christians make a correlation between Old Testament Israel and the Messiah-ship of Jesus Christ. I think this is the best resource for the answer to this question and the full text can be found here
Wright begins his book by making the assertion that the Jesus of ...
7
While this isn't true for all branches of Christianity, the vast majority of Christianity believes God to be Omnipresent - that is, everywhere at once.
From http://www.parentcompany.com/awareness_of_god/aog11.htm
God is Omnipresent
The attribute of God by which He fills the universe in all its parts
and is present everywhere at once. Not a part, ...
6
No, I do not believe so. A general theme in the Tanakh ("Old Testament") is the rebellion and faithlessness of the Israelites. This couldn't possibly be typical of the Messiah.
However, the Messiah is indeed "Israel." Elsewhere in the Tanakh, the Messiah is referred to by the name "David," his ancestor (cp. Jer. 30:9; Eze. 37:24-25; Hos. 3:5). In the same ...
6
I'm not sure if this is too simplisitic, but I think the answer is that although God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all equally God, this does not mean that they are all the same being. We see this when Jesus came to earth, not God the Father; God the Father and Jesus send the Holy Spirit at pentecost - they are not the Holy Spirit.
We see in the ...
5
The sidran's reply was nice, just more one point is:
1 Corinthians 10:11 KJV
Now all these things happened unto them for
examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends
of the world are come.
Some commands are decreed as "a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things" (Hebrews 10.1). Look at that ...
5
Sin is not defined as such by any level of hurt caused to a human being. Sin is, in fact, "missing the mark"; the word has it's roots in the target-shooting of an archer - sin is, in effect, to miss the bulls-eye. First and foremost sin is any failure to live up to the perfect law of God, including all it's moral statutes. For the Jews, this included the ...
5
"O to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be."
Is essentially the poetic way of saying:
Every day I'm made to realize how much I owe everything to grace.
It doesn't need to mean a literal being in debt - it just happens that the language of debt is used to express such ideas. We might also put it:
Every day I'm made to realize ...
5
The theological problem with holding this view stems from Gen 1:26 & 27 (NLT)
26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be
like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the
sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small
animals that scurry along the ground.”
27 So God created human ...
5
The question is a bit vague, and I would be curious as to what verses they were referring to (if any) so I could better answer the question, but I'll take a quick whack at it.
Things were perfect in the garden of Eden. Jesus was the ruler and there was no sin. When Adam and Eve chose to partake of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, they brought sin ...
5
First, a disclaimer: Theistic evolution (TE) is neither a theological system nor an alternative to mainstream evolutionary science. TE is an awkward label applied to people who accept evolutionary theory and also believe in God. Those who claim this label are not a unified group. The following is my own understanding, which is still evolving.
The early ...
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