TheJack wrote:
Jon Snow wrote:
I'm not talking about any blessing but the blessing of eternal life and how we receive it.
That isn't what you said. You said:
If God wanted to teach the world that all His blessings come to us through faith alone and that obedience is essentially meaningless in regards to justification, then why did God fill the Bible with examples of men and women who are never called to receive those blessings through faith alone but rather through faith and obedience?
Now, if you are saying that what you actually meant to ask why if God wanted to teach the world that
some of his blessings come to us faith alone and that obedience is meaningless in regard to justification, then why did God have so many examples in the Bible of obedient people being blessed, I'd just point out the obvious: because some blessings come through faithful obedience.
That to me seems pretty convenient because then you can just simply pick and choose what blessings apply to whatever category.
It still remains for you to explain that there are in fact examples where more than faith alone is indeed tied to the blessing of eternal life.
IOW: he who believes in the Son of God(faith), and also to eats His flesh and drinks His blood(obedience), has eternal life and will be raised on the last day (blessing).
OTOH it makes little to no sense that for time immemorial God always has been shown to follow a certain pattern and now all of a sudden due to the advent of protestant theological study that pattern is no more.
TheJack wrote:
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If that's so then how do you explain Romans 2:7?
"God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life..."
St. Paul in Galatians to me clearly ties "doing good" with where we will wind up in eternity:
"Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart."(Gal 6:7-9)
And it seems to me that if God rewards obedience in regards to the quality of eternal life then it follows that eternal life itself is also contingent upon our obedience. And that is precisely what Paul referred to when he wrote that he came to bring about "the obedience of faith, for the sake of His name..."
In John 3:36 he uses both faith and obedience in the same verse:
"He who believes in the Son has eternal life, he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, for the wrath of God rests upon him."
It seems to me that instead of obedience having "less than nothing" to do with where we will spend eternity it rather has everything to do with it.
I'm not going to engage you in this manner. I've already said why elsewhere, but to repeat: it is an absolute waste of my time for you to ask me about this verse and then when I answer it go "OH YEAH WELL WUT ABOUT . . ." and move on. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but your approach is fundamentally flawed. Unless you believe that there are contradictions in the Bible, the issue is whether or not John 3:16 (or 6:47 or 20:31 or Acts 16:30-31 or Gal 3:1-6 or Rom 4:1-4 or . . . well, you get the idea) do, in fact, teach that salvation is by faith alone.
How is it "fundamentally flawed"? Because you say so? I present verses of Scripture which don't contradict Scripture but
do contradict your opinion of what you insist Scripture says. Is it "flawed" because it contradicts your opinions, because they are passages which need to be parsed and dismantled in order understand the "proper meaning"? Because we need to haggle over what the meaning of "is", is?
As far as "contradictions" in the Bible, that's absurd. I see no contradictions between any verse of Scripture,
however I do in fact believe that there are contradictions a plenty in what you think those verses are saying. Which is precisely why I'm asking you about those inconsistencies in your opinion.
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I'm sorry if that isn't to your liking. If you really think that evangelical teachers and scholars haven't look at those passages, you're being ridiculous.
No, I just know that the common practice is to ignore them or explain them away. And I'm not about to tell Christ that, "well, those verses simply didn't fit my ideals or preferences so I just set them aside." If there are passages of Scripture which contradict
what I may think is being said then I have to adjust and/or jettison my preferred opinions for what is in fact being taught. You know as well as any that the purpose of interpretation is to discover the author's mind and thoughts, not to merely bolster my own preferred ideas or tradition.
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There's simply nothing to be gained by jumping from verse to verse. If you are that interested in those verses, look them up in an evangelical commentary. Tom Constable might be a good source for you. You can read his stuff at
http://www.soniclight.org. He has commentaries available for free on every book of the Bible individually. You could also try going to
http://www.faithalone.org and search their journal and magazine. You can also search over at
http://www.galaxie.com/journals. Those articles are not free, but I have a subscription and if you want to read an article, I can get them for you (and if someone is worried about the legality of it, I could even go through a formal ILL process). If you look through that database, I'd particularly recommend to you articles from Bibliotheca Sacra, the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society, Chafer Theological Seminary Journal, Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, and the Journal of Dispensational Theology. So I'd say that you've got plenty of options in that regard.
With all due respect to the time you spent putting this together, why would I bother to bury myself in other's opinions of Scripture when 1) we're having a discussion here and 2) if everything that I am to believe is presented by the Bible itself? No doubt they may be useful as a novel way of curing any insomnia I may encounter in the future, but I doubt that they have anything new to say aside from what you have written or what I've heard more than a dozen or more evangelical protestant preachers preach on, all of which mainly forming the same echo chamber.