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The Fall of Man as insurance against the Divine Right of Kings


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Rejecting grace is a ticket to Hell, yes, as you well know.  To call us "predetermined" for thus rejecting grace is a strange way to speak of it.


 


It's the foreknowledge part that makes it so.
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  • 8 months later...
On 4/17/2017 at 4:48 PM, ofd said:

You are up to something. Use your keen intellect and go down that route.

I had always thought of it this way. "God" had to create an alternative to himself and his rule for there to be true love between mankind and God, because love only exists if there is a choice. 

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2 hours ago, Elizbaeth said:

I had always thought of it this way. "God" had to create an alternative to himself and his rule for there to be true love between mankind and God, because love only exists if there is a choice. 

Lucifer had an alternative, which was himself.  God didn't need to create Super-Lucifer in order to give Lucifer a choice.

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1 hour ago, Donnadogsoth said:

Lucifer had an alternative, which was himself.  God didn't need to create Super-Lucifer in order to give Lucifer a choice.

I’m not really sold on the mythology of Lucifer as the Devil. The instances that Lucifer is mentioned (Isaiah and Ezekiel) are not actually about the Devil. I was under the impression that in Isaiah “Lucifer” is a transliteration on the Hebrew word Heylel/“light-bringer” or “bringer of the dawn.” In Ezekiel, many scholars think the passage is only about the king of Tyre. 

 

I know Milton infused Christianity with some vivid and striking mythology about the heavens and all supernatural beings, but I don’t really know much that vaidlates the view of Lucifer/Satan as a fallen angel. If it is a part of the Biblical tradition, I would have to guess that it’s a piece of a pagan tradition that got assimilated by the Yahweh cult over time. 

Plus, if God truly is “God,” how could he be having so much difficulty defeating his own defective angel? In the traditional Christian world view, there is one proclaimed god, but in actuality it is God v Satan, a dualistic pitting of one god against another god of equal power.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/28/2017 at 8:02 PM, Elizbaeth said:

I’m not really sold on the mythology of Lucifer as the Devil. The instances that Lucifer is mentioned (Isaiah and Ezekiel) are not actually about the Devil. I was under the impression that in Isaiah “Lucifer” is a transliteration on the Hebrew word Heylel/“light-bringer” or “bringer of the dawn.” In Ezekiel, many scholars think the passage is only about the king of Tyre. 

 

I know Milton infused Christianity with some vivid and striking mythology about the heavens and all supernatural beings, but I don’t really know much that vaidlates the view of Lucifer/Satan as a fallen angel. If it is a part of the Biblical tradition, I would have to guess that it’s a piece of a pagan tradition that got assimilated by the Yahweh cult over time. 

Plus, if God truly is “God,” how could he be having so much difficulty defeating his own defective angel? In the traditional Christian world view, there is one proclaimed god, but in actuality it is God v Satan, a dualistic pitting of one god against another god of equal power.

This sort of thinking crops up when we treat Christianity as a mythology rather than simply looking to the Catechism to see what the Church actually believes.  In the latter is where we will find out the answer to the nature of the devil as a fallen angel.

This is also where we understand that the devil is merely an angel, who freely rebelled against God and who works against God by trying to undermine humanity. 

Analysing Christianity outside of this understanding, or kindred understandings in Protestantism and Orthodoxy, is simply lying about what the Church actually believes and trying to use rhetorical legerdemain to imply there is a different metaphysical reality that the Church "really" believes and is just lying about to itself and to its congregations.

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On 1/5/2018 at 8:54 PM, Donnadogsoth said:

This sort of thinking crops up when we treat Christianity as a mythology rather than simply looking to the Catechism

Are you Catholic? I know nothing about the Catechism. I was raised in the Church of Christ (raised there, but am atheist), and I only know the Biblical texts. The whole foundation of the Church of Christ is based on the idea that the Bible is the word of God, and nothing else is needed outside of the text. Because of this, I grew up without any knowledge of outside authoritative texts, and within the Bible I see no evidence that Lucifer is the devil.

I do view the Bible as mythology. The Church of Christ is a fundamentalist Protestant groupand pushes the literal truth of the Bible. I believed this when I was growing up, but when I really started digging into the texts and the history and all the translations and history of languages, it seemed impossible that the Garden of Eden story could be factual truth. There are too many inconsistencies and downright contradictions in factual assertions and theological ideas. It had to be mythical, and I believe it is a heavily doctored and spliced mythology at that.

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