From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Wed Jul 23 2003 - 19:56:43 EDT
In a message dated 7/23/03 4:35:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
richard@biblewheel.com writes:
> But I never thought of this as a *technique* of conforming to the law. Faith
> in God through Christ is the only way to heaven. Is this what you mean by
> "conformation to the Law?" If not, then it would seem that your argument has
> a fatal flaw. What I mean is that all the good works in the world, all the
> conformation to the law, will NEVER get you into heaven because the works of
> the Law can be done faithlessly by those who hate God and have no faith. The
> central issue is faith and the Bible consistently contrasts that with
> conformaty to the law. These are the issues that must be addressed if your
> argument is to advance amongst Gospel Christians.
>
>
I can't argue with you. for two reasons. Catholics and Protestants fight over
that very issue. We say faith and works. I think some of you or all of you
say faith alone, but its splitting hairs. If you have the faith, you do the
works, although I agree outwardly good works does not indicate inner faith.
Some of my terminology is precisely technical so I can avoid cultural
trappings and talk about all religions. I have thought of conforming to the Law as a
technique because a technique existed for it prior to Jesus demonstrating it
and exists in every major religion. But in order to explain that I would have
to go through the significance of Melchizedek and take you back to the rg veda
and I risk losing you completely.
Before the conquest of the indus valley by the Indo-Aryans who created a
tripartite social structure based on cattle sacrifice (the Levites later also
sacrifice cattle) to rule their subjects, pastoralists had no stratified
structure. Each family patriarch was priest and king. when the indus valley was
conquered and the aryans created tripartition and specialized as priests or kings in
order to rule efficiently, a basic rupture in man's functionality before God
was realized and the caste system evolved out of that. The Persians duplicated
that rupture in Zorostrianism. Early Judaism drew heavily on Zoroastrianism
(Ezra who edited and reread the law after the return from exile was a babylonian
priest under Persian rulers) and acquired the tripartite structure we know as
the Temple sacrificial system which also had the "chosen" (ruler) and the
"goyim"(ruled). Jesus demonstrated that the Law should be written on the heart,
made tripartition obsolete and repaired the rupture. But that wasn't the only
place the rupture was repaired. In India, a Brahmin repaired the rupture
intellectually. He began to teach it but he didn't demonstrate it in direct
defiance of the caste system which was an outgrowth of tripartition as Jesus had
defied tripartion in the west. His followers taught techniques for self
discipline to get them to "enlightenment." Each technique, east and west, has as its
object, the self sacrifice. In fact, a few zen koans are remarkably similar to
Jesus' parables. So, you never thought of the self sacrifice as a technique. I
learned to see it as a technique when I read the Vedas and studied the
development of Buddhism. The finest technique is Zen. It proffers mastery of the
body. Zen has no theology. Only technique, so it doesn't conflict with
Christianity. It's like a manual for doing the will of the Father, but it doesn't call
it self anything.
The defeat of tripartition and the reunion of priest and king is assumed in
the universality of Christianity where there is no social structure of ruler
and ruled making everybody inherently sacred and not "relatively" sacred
according to function as in Hinduism and Judaism.
solomon knew the tribes didn't want the sacrificial system or a stratified
social structure. family patriarchs wanted to maintain their independence and
fully function as priest/kings before God. That's why solomon had the
interpolation regarding melchizedek put in genesis. read genesis 14 with 14:19-21
included and then read it again without it. It reads perfectly without it.
rich
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