:: St. Stephen's Musings ::

:: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 ::

Will the Real Jesus Stand Up, Please?

More proof that western Christians are not unified in any way that really matters, despite their identical claims to "being saved" and being just as much "in Christ" as any other self-proclaimed Christian.

It seems Mr. Heddle is what we could call "camassia" (Greek for "one who asks questions we'd better be able to answer")

I hate to break it to the postmodern Christians, but if you can't agree or come up with non-contradictory positions on what Mr. Heddle's unbelievably simple sentence is *actually* saying about Jesus, then the fact that we all use the word "Christian" to describe our relationship with God leads any sane person to the conclusion that the word "Christian" has lost all meaning whatsoever.

Seriously folks, if we consider ourselves in a relationship with the true God we should know the answer to Mr. Heddle's question and we should all agree on the answer because what we say about it is fundamental to everything we claim about who the Christian God is and what our Faith is all about. Bottom line: Different answers means different Gods.

(By the way (and contrary to what some have argued), Mr. Heddle's question does NOT fall into the "opinions" category St. Paul refers to in Rom 14:1.)

So here is your homework-- I'm not looking for the answer to Mr. Heddle's question; what I want is a coherent reason to believe that the contradictory statements in Mr. Heddles' comment box are equally true about the real God.

If you can "recontextualize" (to use a popular, Em-church phrase) these without resorting to total nihilistic relativism, your next task is to tell me why I should believe your answer and not the another "Christian" who will use Scripture, reason, and "experience" to give me an answer that totally contradicts yours.

If you find this task difficult, you may start to realize why the Orthodox believe what we do about the Church being the "pillar and ground of truth."

Update: In the October 15th "Apologia Cornucopia" Mr. Heddle notes my post and concurs: "The question 'Does God Love Everyone?' is a matter of Christian orthodoxy. The answer cannot be both yes and no. Fair enough."

:: Karl :: 7:38:00 AM [Link] ::