Re: The Left Hand of God or "is God a socialist"

Janice wrote this:

I go by what Jesus said (paraphrased): "... Whenever you do
this, do it in remembrance of me" - a memorial. Christ is always
present in his people.

If you believe that to please God, it is essential for you to
actually go somewhere so that you can "literally" bring Christ down
from heaven and sacrifice him anew at communion in order to atone for
your sins, it is essential for you.

Essentials of the faith don't revolve around rituals, they revolve
around who God is and what he is doing.

There are, and will be plenty of Christians in heaven for whom
Transubstantiation or Consubstantiation wasn't an "essential" belief.

Or do you not believe that?

***

Ted replies:
Yes, Janice, I believe there are and will be plenty of Christians in heaven
who don't believe in Transubstantian or consubstantiation.

But you ducked my point, Janice. The paragraph about essential Christian
beliefs through the centuries leaves out all these Christians whom you and I
both think are Christians. Do you agree with the sentence right before this
one?

And, what of those many modern Christians who baptize only adult (or
adolescent) believers by immersion, upon confession of faith? Surely that
is an aberration from tradition; surely the vast majority of Christians past
and present baptize infants as well as adults. My suspicion is that on this
one you and I are in the majority, but folks like Mr Falwell and many
contemporary evangelicals do otherwise. What of them? Are they also being
intellectually dishonest? I suspect not.

Now let me come back to the Eucharist issue, Janice, just to focus
attention more on the problems that the author of the article you posted did
not bring into the issue. Observing the Eucharist only as a "remembrance"
is the Anabaptist view. Anabaptists are free-will Christians, janice; that
is, they are "Arminian" in theology though that term is applied
anachronistically since they precede Jacob Hermensen (ie., Arminius) by a
century, and we already know what you think about Arminians. I'm not sure
you really appreciate the radical nature of this view of the Eucharist,
relative to historic Christianity.

My point in going into all of this is not to defend or attack any view on
the Eucharist or free will. My point (again) is to say how deep these
waters are, before we jump too quickly into them. Before taking a dive, it
might be best first to become more familiar with the nature of some past and
present theological debates, relative to foundational issues in Christian
faith, and to become much more familiar with the theological side of modern
religion/science conversation. This, I dare say, is where many have hit
their heads on underwater rocks: either they can't articulate accurately the
views of many contemporary voices in that conversation, b/c they have not
taken time to study their positions (perhaps on the assumption that they
have nothing worth saying), and therefore have missed very significant
subtleties (I know that "very significant subtleties" sounds like quibbling
over minnows, but often it is not, for "heretics" have been burned for
misplaced modifiers); or they have defined orthodoxy in such a way that the
truth can't fit into their box. This is one of those cases where casual
swimmers often drown.

ted
Received on Tue Mar 7 13:20:15 2006