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One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 1/19/2011 11:43 AM (GMT -6)

If you were go up to your random run-of-the-mill American Evangelical Christian...and take the following thought project...

---------------------

I'm going to ask you two questions. We want first-impression, gut-level responses as answers, so the idea is to answer with the first thing that comes to your mind on it. It's either A or B. Simple.

A: You can have God-given immortal life, joy, and peace in a God-given perfect human society with all your loved ones (and all other human beings who've ever lived, suffered, and died) forever...with no experience of Jesus' presence there at all.

B: You can have the Spiritual Presence of Jesus...and just that. Only that. No assurance of anything else.

...what do you think the run-of-the-mill American Evangelical Christians would choose and why?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 1/19/2011 11:45 AM (GMT -6)

Here's an answer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/19/2011 10:50:34 AM (GMT-6)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 1/19/2011 12:28 PM (GMT -6)

I could see different answers between "one-storey" Christians and "two-storey" Christians...

Ya think?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 1/19/2011 12:47 PM (GMT -6)

Given what I know, I'd choose B. But I also believe B is impossible to experience in its fullness without something like A, and A is impossible apart from B.

T

KIXYTΘEMTA

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 1/19/2011 2:29 PM (GMT -6)

Tom, you are officially James Loder's mental twin.

In "The Knight's Move", Loder specifically says that the Church itself is a bi-polar assymetrical relational unity between the Spiritual Presence of Christ and the community of all believers, where the Spiritual Presence of Christ is the "higher level" in the assymetrical relation. It works out such that it is only by the indwelling Spiritual Presence of Christ that transfigured human individuals-in-community (expressed in "A" ) can fully flourish...while it's equally true that only transfigured humanity is the fullest expression and embodiment of the reality of the Spiritual Presence of Christ.

Your answer retained the assymetry (in that you chose B), while noting the irreducible relationality between A and B.

Sweet.

So, how many of our American evangelical brothers and sisters would say this as well?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

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