Heaven Not For Christians Only

[Menolly]

I understand y'all are talking about the spirit of Chr-stianity here. But, aren't there sects that basically do say "be saved and you'll get into heaven" in spite of what you do?

Regarding nazism and Chr-stianity, it seems obvious the leadership only paid lip service to the Lutheran church. But weren't the rank and file nazis all Lutheran?

[Xar]

I understand y'all are talking about the spirit of Chr-stianity here. But, aren't there sects that basically do say "be saved and you'll get into heaven" in spite of what you do?

Yes, there are, and that's why I mentioned them when responding to Lina. For some denominations, good works are entirely superfluous, and you can only enter Heaven if you are a member of the faith or (in other cases) if God arbitrarily decided you'll get saved while your neighbour won't.

Regarding nazism and Chr-stianity, it seems obvious the leadership only paid lip service to the Lutheran church. But weren't the rank and file nazis all Lutheran?

Again, saying something and being something is not the same: any of those who committed atrocities in the camps may have claimed they were Christian (in fact, most probably did), but that doesn't mean they were any more Christian than an unrepentant murderer. Once again, this is a question of semantics - the denominations above might go so far in some cases as to say "well, if there were Nazis who were members of our church, and who embraced our faith, then they went to Heaven regardless of what they did"; however, this in itself is a violation of the spirit of Christianity, isn't it?

[Menolly]

Regarding nazism and Chr-stianity, it seems obvious the leadership only paid lip service to the Lutheran church. But weren't the rank and file nazis all Lutheran?

Again, saying something and being something is not the same: any of those who committed atrocities in the camps may have claimed they were Christian (in fact, most probably did), but that doesn't mean they were any more Christian than an unrepentant murderer. Once again, this is a question of semantics - the denominations above might go so far in some cases as to say "well, if there were Nazis who were members of our church, and who embraced our faith, then they went to Heaven regardless of what they did"; however, this in itself is a violation of the spirit of Christianity, isn't it?

*keep in mind I'm an outsider looking in here*

I understand what you are saying. But it seems when we talk of the spirit of things that we are getting into some of the things that separate the various denominations in Judaism as well, although we focus on the here and now instead of the afterlife. For instance, the subject of organ donation sharply differs in Judaism. The Reform, and even some Conservative, Jews have embraced organ donation, both accepting and donation. The Orthodox will accept organs to heal a life, but because they believe the body should be buried with all parts, most will not donate themselves (it is a subject rife with conflict, I don't really wish to get into it).

Which denomination is keeping the "spirit" of HaShem's intent? I am sure we all have our own opinion. Would it not be the same regarding how someone considers themselves if they're Chr-stian or not? If their dogma says "accept Chr-st and you'll get into heaven" and taught that the Jews killed their L-rd, who are we to say if the nazis considered themselves Chr-stians or not? We may not consider them such now, but in the '30s and '40s... *shrug*

...I am terrible at expressing this type of stuff...it doesn't even really make sense to me...sorry...

[[Syl]]

John 9
35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?
36 He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?
37 And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.
38 And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.
39 And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.
40 And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also?
41 Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

Romans 2
7 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:
8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,
9 Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;
10 But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile:
11 For there is no respect of persons with God.
12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;
13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9907chap.asp

[Menolly]

www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9907chap.asp

Thank you for that link, Syl. A lot of that still flies over my head, but it also helps me see how I would be considered damned in the eyes of the church.

[rusmeister]

www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9907chap.asp

Thank you for that link, Syl. A lot of that still flies over my head, but it also helps me see how I would be considered damned in the eyes of the church.

41 Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

In an effort to help clarify this seemingly strange text:

CS Lewis points out a simple truth that it is only when a person begins to stop giving in to temptations and starts fighting them that he begins to realize how bad he really is. The 'better' he becomes the more he realizes how wicked he really is. (More accurately, his true state is gradually revealed to him more and more clearly). A truly bad person thinks that he is all right; that nothing is wrong with him. This is because he has had no experience resisting his own (warped) desires.

The people in the Church are no better than you. They simply have a better awareness of their condition.

Does that make any sense to you?

[Menolly]

Yes.

But I still willfully and with full knowlege of knowing that I can learn of and perhaps decide to seek "salvation," choose to put it aside and not accept it. Even without things that I do that I would consider possible sins, doesn't that one thing alone damn me in the eyes of the church?

I can not see myself ever being drawn to worship anything that would make such a distinction. For me, and for me only, to insist on love being returned in order to receive love and forgiveness rankles. But it works for others and that's fine.

Oh...again I am saying this badly. I mean no offense.

[Dromond]

the Nazis were not Christians. Tutu knows better than this.

Null, we've had this argument before, and it got ugly... I am hoping that doesn't occur this time.

Quite simply, it comes to a disagreement of what a Christian is...

Not trying to put words in your mouth, but I think I can say that 'Christian' means to you a lifestyle and meaning that follows what Jesus asks of you... that's admirable, and you wonder how one can make such a thing seem disgusting, and that's what drives your life and definition.
Understood, and peace to you.
I think you would find that you and I live by much of the same rules that keep us sane, I just have different reasons when defining my beliefs.

But I submit the Nazis were Christians because they said they were. They believed that Jesus was the Son of God. A horrible twist, but... yes.,

they were horrible Christians.

The thing is, can you call a bad Christian a Christian?

Honest question.

[Avatar]

Hmmm, as a subjectivist, I can suggest that their claim did make it so, to them.

Welcome to the Close Lina. We have lots of fun here.

Do any of you really believe that you or anyone you know of, by their good ACTIONS alone, are good enough to BELONG IN heaven on the basis of their own merit? I would be hopeless if God judged us based on our actions... (and needless to say, the motives BEHIND the actions) because I'd be a goner for sure without any hope of ever attaining heaven.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. That if god wants you to be a good person, then being a good person should be enough, regardless of whether you believe in God or not.

If being a good person is meaningless without belief in God, then its not a God I want to associate with.

--A

[danlo]

^what he said!^

[emotional leper]

Hmmm, as a subjectivist, I can suggest that their claim did make it so, to them.

Welcome to the Close Lina. We have lots of fun here.

Do any of you really believe that you or anyone you know of, by their good ACTIONS alone, are good enough to BELONG IN heaven on the basis of their own merit? I would be hopeless if God judged us based on our actions... (and needless to say, the motives BEHIND the actions) because I'd be a goner for sure without any hope of ever attaining heaven.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. That if god wants you to be a good person, then being a good person should be enough, regardless of whether you believe in God or not.

If being a good person is meaningless without belief in God, then its not a God I want to associate with.

--A

Join my religion. We worship a psychotic, bi-polar goddess who created the earth and promptly placed it in her purse and lost it, and we live in fear of the day she becomes manic and goes on a cleaning spree, the day we call "The Great Purse Up-Ending."

[Avatar]

I should really make my title KSC. That way people would at least know what religion I pretend to when I bother to pretend to one.

--A

[rusmeister]

Yes.

But I still willfully and with full knowlege of knowing that I can learn of and perhaps decide to seek "salvation," choose to put it aside and not accept it. Even without things that I do that I would consider possible sins, doesn't that one thing alone damn me in the eyes of the church?

I can not see myself ever being drawn to worship anything that would make such a distinction. For me, and for me only, to insist on love being returned in order to receive love and forgiveness rankles. But it works for others and that's fine.

Oh...again I am saying this badly. I mean no offense.

None taken!
The question, of course, that subjectivists desperately try to avoid, is, is the view of the Church true or not? If it is not, then it hardly matters what they think. Christianity is of no importance at all as a faith and should be dropped like a dirty rag. If it is, it is of absolute importance for your immortal being.
Therefore, if it IS true, then you wilfully choose damnation by rejecting the salvation that is offered to you, just as a person drowning at sea refuses a lifeline and thus condemns themselves to drown. It is NOT something God "does" to you.

For an argument that smashes subjectivism, let me point you to C.S. Lewis's essay, "The Poison of Subjectivism", to be found in a collection titled "The Seeing Eye" (formerly "Christian Reflections").

Recognizing that not everybody will be readily able to obtain this text, I can offer a few brief excerpts to give you a sense of the argument:

...Until modern times,” he wrote, “no thinker of the first rank ever doubted that our judgements of value were rational judgements or that what they discovered was objective.
...
Out of this apparently innocent idea [that values are subjective] comes the disease that will certainly end our species (and, in my view, damn our souls) if it is not crushed; the fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its ‘ideology’ as men choose their clothes.
...
The idea that “cultures differ so widely that there is no common tradition at all” is a lie, a good, solid, resounding lie.
...
If a man will go into a library and spend a few days with the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics he will soon discover that massive unanimity of the practical reason in man. From the Babylonian Hymn to Samos, from the Laws of Manu, the Book of the Dead, the Analects, the Stoics, the Platonists, from Australian aborigines and Redskins, he will collect the same triumphantly monotonous denunciations of oppression, murder, treachery and falsehood, the same injunctions of kindness to the aged, the young, and the weak, of almsgiving and impartiality and honesty. He may be a little surprised . . . to find that precepts of mercy are more frequent than precepts of justice; but he will no longer doubt that there is such a thing as the Law of Nature. There are, of course, differences. . . . But the pretence that we are presented with a mere chaos . . . is simply false.
...
Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish. If we do, we may live, and such a return might have one minor advantage. If we believed in the absolute reality of elementary moral platitudes, we should value those who solicit our votes by other standards than have recently been in fashion. While we believe that good is something to be invented, we demand of our rulers such qualities as 'vision', 'dynamism', 'creativity', and the like. If we returned to the objective view we should demand qualities much rarer, and much more beneficial--virtue, knowledge, diligence, and skill. 'Vision' is for sale, or claims to be for sale, everywhere. But give me a man who will do a day's work for a day's pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned a job.

There's a good deal more to back up his statements there, but you know how copyright hamstrings us. Have to stick to fair use.

[Xar]

None taken!
The question, of course, that subjectivists desperately try to avoid, is, is the view of the Church true or not? If it is not, then it hardly matters what they think. Christianity is of no importance at all as a faith and should be dropped like a dirty rag. If it is, it is of absolute importance for your immortal being.
Therefore, if it IS true, then you wilfully choose damnation by rejecting the salvation that is offered to you, just as a person drowning at sea refuses a lifeline and thus condemns themselves to drown. It is NOT something God "does" to you.

To be honest, despite the fact I was raised as a Catholic, I not only disagree with the thought that choosing not to be a Christian would automatically damn the person, I find it - as I said before - quite repelling.

From a theological point of view, it demeans God. For example, it implies that the Bible was wrong - because a Jew who does not turn to Jesus is therefore as damned as an atheist; but more so, it implies that God is fundamentally less perfect than a mortal parent - and this is both a contradiction and a demeaning.

If a mortal parent can forgive his or her child anything - and we have seen proof of this in parents who stood by their children even when they were convicted of murder - then saying that God does not "forgive" His children the choice of this religion over that, means He is less perfect than a mortal. And I have to disagree with you about it not being something God "does" to you; since there is no authority above God, it follows that, God being omnipotent, it would indeed be His choice, directly or not, whether to damn members of other religions or not. Saying "this is the way it is and it's not God's doing" is a contradiction because it implies God has no power over this.

[Avatar]

Thanks for posting again Rus. You reminded me of something I wanted to mention about your previous post. The (admittedly difficult) analogy of the ship. The problem is of course that you don't get to see all the navigational equipment. You have to trust the captain when he tells you he has them and they're good.

As for this latest one, well, as I've said elsewhere, I am a subjectivist. I don't think that the existence of common values negates subjectivism. All it demonstrates is that societies have the same goals. Survival and prosperity.

Now, if every society had all the same values, you might have a case.

--A

[rusmeister]

Thanks for posting again Rus. You reminded me of something I wanted to mention about your previous post. The (admittedly difficult) analogy of the ship. The problem is of course that you don't get to see all the navigational equipment. You have to trust the captain when he tells you he has them and they're good.

As for this latest one, well, as I've said elsewhere, I am a subjectivist. I don't think that the existence of common values negates subjectivism. All it demonstrates is that societies have the same goals. Survival and prosperity.

Now, if every society had all the same values, you might have a case.

--A

You're quite right that you have to trust authority at some point. Unless you are quite sure you can navigate this particular ocean, you have to ultimately make a decision to trust or not trust the institutions that say they do.

Again, I really really challenge you to obtain and read Lewis's essay in full. If your approach is truly scientific, you would have to be prepared to alter your position based on new data, or more accurately, a realization of the ultimate lack of connection between logic and subjectivism - its lack of a sound philosophical base.

Xar, you missed the key question I posted - if the Christian world view is true or not. If it is, repellent or not wouldn't matter - it would merely be an emotional reaction to a reality - and it could be one with a basis that lacks the one more thing to cease hating/fearing it, much as a child can fear learning to swim. For some reason what comes up for me here are situations like the 1997 film "The Titanic", where the heroes are depicted in repellent situations where the only way to escape is to dive under the very water you don't want to go into.

[Avatar]

Unless you are quite sure you can navigate this particular ocean, you have to ultimately make a decision to trust or not trust the institutions that say they do.

I have more confidence in my ability to do so than in the claimed ability of somebody else. Especially when I have serious reservations about his command decisions/ability/philosophy.

Again, I really really challenge you to obtain and read Lewis's essay in full. If your approach is truly scientific, you would have to be prepared to alter your position based on new data, or more accurately, a realization of the ultimate lack of connection between logic and subjectivism - its lack of a sound philosophical base.

It's much easier and more rewarding to debate it with you instead. I take it your comment is a precursor to your exposition on the sound philosophical base of objectivism?

--A

[Xar]

Xar, you missed the key question I posted - if the Christian world view is true or not. If it is, repellent or not wouldn't matter - it would merely be an emotional reaction to a reality - and it could be one with a basis that lacks the one more thing to cease hating/fearing it, much as a child can fear learning to swim. For some reason what comes up for me here are situations like the 1997 film "The Titanic", where the heroes are depicted in repellent situations where the only way to escape is to dive under the very water you don't want to go into.

Well, I didn't really miss it as much as consider that whatever the answer, it is irrelevant to what I said. If the Christian world view (and again, here we are generalizing too much - different Christian denominations may have wildly different beliefs regarding, among other things, the criteria for salvation) is false, then it doesn't matter; if the belief that the Christian faith is essential to salvation is true, on the other hand, then despite the fact that I do believe in God, I find that I would tend to associate with Avatar in saying that a God who does not save His children unless they worship him is not a deity worth worshiping in the first place, since establishing such a criterion suggests intolerance or at least, less than perfection.

But then again, as most other people here know, my own ideas are a bit different from those of mainstream Christianity

[Menolly]

If the Christian world view (and again, here we are generalizing too much - different Christian denominations may have wildly different beliefs regarding, among other things, the criteria for salvation) is false, then it doesn't matter; if the belief that the Christian faith is essential to salvation is true, on the other hand, then despite the fact that I do believe in God, I find that I would tend to associate with Avatar in saying that a God who does not save His children unless they worship him is not a deity worth worshiping in the first place, since establishing such a criterion suggests intolerance or at least, less than perfection.

*slowly nodding*

I think this is what I said earlier, only not very succinctly. It's definitely what I meant. Although I am not looking for "salvation" per se.

[Cail]

I think the other thing to remember is that there's a huge amount of discord and disagreement as to what is a Christian. According to a lot of the fundies, I'm (as a Catholic) absolutely not saved and have no place in the Kingdom.