diverse views

February 25, 2018

Justification by Faith

Faith is the response of the total self, the mind, will and affections.  Being justified is a personal phenomenon.  Service and love are more important than right beliefs and sound doctrine.  You do your own believing.  God transforms the heart and you experience God’s love.  Good works are a correlation to faith.  Protestants love the apostle Paul.  They have a tendency to over emphasis the written Bible with an emphasis on private religious experience.  Diversity is good, since most Protestant groups have broken off from another Protestant group or from the Roman Catholic Church.  In a certain sense heretical or diverse views are expected rather than one orthodox single view.

 

 

February 3, 2018

The non-writing Jesus

Jesus did not write anything because he lived in a predominant oral society.  The apostles of Jesus followed suit and transmitted the living oral tradition to their disciples and the new followers of Jesus the Christ.  The apostles did not need to write anything, since they could explain everything.  However, once Christianity moved out of Jerusalem there was a need to write things down in a more permanent form.  The early Pauline letters to the new Christian Churches show how Christianity spread.  Increasing time and distance from the place of Jerusalem and the time of Jesus led to a decision to write things down.  In order to prevent heresy or diverse views, while at the same time encouraging the early Christians, the need for a written record became evident.