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I ask this question, because many sincere believers say that if you are missing a leg, you can grow a new one because of your faith in Christ.

Do you believe this is true?

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Originally posted by quest for truth

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I ask this question, because many sincere believers say that if you are missing a leg, you can grow a new one because of your faith in Christ.

Do you believe this is true?

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Iconoclast, I'd be curious to know from where this question is coming. Have you been dialoguing with some people who believe this?

Why do you say Jesus died?

Do you believe in miracles? If so, what kind?

My answer to the reason Jesus died is that he came to set the captive spiritually free from the bondage of sin and offer life everlasting.

I believe Jesus performed miracles during his ministry on earth. I believe miracles happen all the time. Birth is a miracle. Change of seasons is a miracle. When a person is cured or healed of an ailment that too is a miracle.

How would you answer your question, Iconoclast?

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Iconoclast, I'd be curious to know from where this question is coming...
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Originally posted by Mayflower

.
Emphatically,
NO.
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Iconoclast wrote:

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I ask this question, because many sincere believers say that if you are missing a leg, you can grow a new one because of your faith in Christ.

Do you believe this is true?
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We come to learn that God has always loved us and always forgives us - that indeed it is not about forgiveness on God's part at all - forgiveness is our problem because we judge.

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Originally posted by Iconoclast

... We do not expect the child to continue in their childlike understanding as they grow up - we expect them move beyond their early understanding. This is why Paul says that we must move beyond the "milk" of our early understanding of Christ's death (Christianity) and begin to eat meat - to begin to really comprehend what is going on. It is only AFTER we let go of our own judgement that we can even begin to comprehend God's love for us.

This is because we are totally caught up in the legal view. We do not forgive ourselves, God or others. God seeks to break through this by first helping us to understand that He forgives us and thus we are invited to forgive ourselves. As we learn to forgive ourselves we learn that God loves us just as we are - even in our sin. We come to learn that God has always loved us and always forgives us - that indeed it is not about forgiveness on God's part at all - forgiveness is our problem because we judge.

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"...we must move beyond the "milk" of our early understanding of Christ's death (Christianity) and begin to eat meat - to begin to really comprehend what is going on. ..."

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The Nicene Creed

We believe in one God,
  the Father, the Almighty,
  maker of heaven and earth,
  of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
  the only Son of God,
  eternally begotten of the Father,
  God from God, Light from Light,
  true God from true God,
  begotten, not made,
  of one Being with the Father.
  Through him all things were made.
  For us and for our salvation
    he came down from heaven:
  by the power of the Holy Spirit
    he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
    and was made man.
  For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
    he suffered death and was buried.
    On the third day he rose again
      in accordance with the Scriptures;
    he ascended into heaven
      and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
  He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
    and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
  who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
  With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
  He has spoken through the Prophets.
  We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
  We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
  We look for the resurrection of the dead,
    and the life of the world to come.  Amen.

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Originally posted by Iconoclast

It is WE who require a sacrifice, a propiation for our sins. And thus God offers us this understanding to us.

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P.S. Don, did you get my e-mails from a while back? What do you think of the Pattern Language concepts?

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

I'd like to point out that the people who fashioned the Nicene Creed did not conceive of Christianity as being a legalistic/juridical religion. (That's Augustine, and the Roman cultural influence.)

Read Athanasias, or the other Eastern Fathers.

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Masai Creed
The Masai Creed is a creed composed in about 1960 by Western Christian missionaries for the Masai people of East Africa. The missionaries were from the Congregation of the Holy Ghost. The creed attempts to express the essentials of the Christian faith within the Masai culture. www.fact-index.com/m/ma/masai_creed.html

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Beliefnet.com

Why We Need Creeds
An acclaimed scholar explains how the Christian creed developed and how it continues to shape churches.

Interview with Jaroslav Pelikan

www.beliefnet.com/story/133/story_13300_1.html

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Originally posted by PotOnWheelI like that creed too, Don. Did you get that when I posted the LINK to Jaroslav Pelikan's feature on NPR?

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

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Originally posted by Iconoclast

... We do not expect the child to continue in their childlike understanding as they grow up - we expect them move beyond their early understanding. This is why Paul says that we must move beyond the "milk" of our early understanding of Christ's death (Christianity) and begin to eat meat - to begin to really comprehend what is going on. It is only AFTER we let go of our own judgement that we can even begin to comprehend God's love for us.

This is because we are totally caught up in the legal view. We do not forgive ourselves, God or others. God seeks to break through this by first helping us to understand that He forgives us and thus we are invited to forgive ourselves. As we learn to forgive ourselves we learn that God loves us just as we are - even in our sin. We come to learn that God has always loved us and always forgives us - that indeed it is not about forgiveness on God's part at all - forgiveness is our problem because we judge.

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Now, Christopher Alexander has some interesting ideas. I have "A Pattern Language" and "The Timeless Way of Building". I also have his Harvard Ph.D. Disertation: "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" that the U of Minn used to use for their computer systems analysis program. Interesting stuff.

But I also noticed a heavy admixture of eastern philosophy in his ideas and methodology. That's not necessarily good or bad. But one should KNOW that it is there. ("Heads up" search for truth."

Being a careful, critical reader, though, and not afraid to wonder, I'm grabbed by something that Iconoclast said. I know that Icon liked discussing Deitrich Bonhoeffer's "Ethics" book; yet also held to the "cheep grace" that Bonhoeffer preaches against in his "Cost of Discipleship." That appears to me contradictory.

But for now, I'd like to look hard at Icon's remarks just now:

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"...we must move beyond the "milk" of our early understanding of Christ's death (Christianity) and begin to eat meat - to begin to really comprehend what is going on. ..."

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That strikes me as perhaps revealing an underlying heresy.

Did Icon just say that the death and resurrection of Christ was a mere play act, or a fable? Did Icon say that God did not assume humanity and deify it in his flesh? Does Icon mean, when he says "our early understanding of Christ's death (Christianity)" that the suffering and death of Christ is immaturity, and will be replaced? When he says "really. . .going on" does he mean that the Cross is not what is really going on.

That's what it looked like.

The CROSS shows us that WE must take up our cross, and that in baptism we must die and rise again in Christ, becoming partakers of Christ. The Cross shows us that in his entire life, Christ took the world that through sin had been given over to death and the dominance of the devil, and bit by bit, through his will to suffer for us, impassibly suffer as the suffering he did was his choice and not something forced (passed) upon him; and he did that for us. Christ visited all parts of the creation, and in his incarnation confronted corruption in his flesh.

I worry that the content of Christianity be borrowed and recast in a form that denies sin, that denies the necessity of the Cross.

I am concerned when sin is not understood to lead to death; when sin is merely something to be ignored as substandard understanding of what is "really" going on.

The Scriptures, and the remembrance "after me" of the Church in the celebration of the Lord's Supper IS the standard of belief. Is the benchmark. Is the creed. St. Irenaeus of Leon (France) said: "Our belief agrees with the Eucharist and the Eucharist agrees with oru belief." And he celebrated the diversity in the way the practices wre manifest and yet all at the same time the same too.

At all times and in all places is the standard. John 3:16 (That he gave his only begotten son) is the standard.

Maybe that was just bad writing. But given Alexander's well-mixed infusion of eastern philosophy, I'm cautious.

PoW

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Originally posted by BBBCanada

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

I'd like to point out that the people who fashioned the Nicene Creed did not conceive of Christianity as being a legalistic/juridical religion. (That's Augustine, and the Roman cultural influence.)

Read Athanasias, or the other Eastern Fathers.

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And let's remember that this is not all a bad thing either. For the "legal view" does help in responding to apologetical questions such as: If someone killed your entire family how is it possibly justice / propiation of sin for you then to offer yourself up to be killed by the murderer as well? This is utter nonsense

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