From: swansond@nextnet.ccs.csus.edu (Dennis Swanson)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Not peace, but a sword (was Re: Liberal vs. Conservative)
Date: 14 Sep 92 01:53:27 GMT
Organization: California State University Sacramento

In article <Sep.11.00.24.47.1992.16449@athos.rutgers.edu> masimo@netcom.com (Michael Maas) writes:
>...
>did Jesus come to bring peace and love to the world, or did Jesus come to 
>establish a new exclusive social order, membership of which is determined
>by adherence to a theological construct.  If you are choosing the latter, or
>even have doubts about the former, you're on the wrong side.

I have serious doubts about the former. In Matthew 10:34- I read "'Do not
suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to
bring peace but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his
father,...'" (NIV). It strikes me as a bit melodramatic to assume that the
latter, as you have defined it, is the only alternative to choosing the
former.

I must admit that I post this scripture with some apprehension -- I'm leery
of the possibility that you deem these passages that are supposedly Jesus'
words a misquote or erroneous in some other way. Which leads me to what
I'd like to talk about next (please, bear with me).

I've been following the discussion that you and RexLex have had on inerrancy,
and as someone who is still quite immature in his Christianity, I've made
the following observation that you might or might not feel it worthwhile to
comment on. In trying to decide where it is I stand on the issue (and what
exactly inerrancy is), as with any other issue, I weigh in my mind how
confident I am of the correctness of each side's expressed opinions. What
occured to me that I found to be sufficiently interesting to post is this:
Some of what Rexlex says seems perfectly reasonable (to me). Some of what
you say seems perfectly reasonable. One interesting distinction is that I
am aware of his basis for his opinions, but for yours I am not. What he
offers as support for his opinions is the Bible as the supposedly inerrant
Word of God. Whether or not I consider this foundation to be a shaky one,
and/or to what degree, is a topic for another time. What I'm trying to point
out is that I know what he allegedly uses to test his opinions. I am really
unsure how you test your opinions, and therefore do not know how to go about
assigning relative weights as I follow the discussions you and he engage in.
If there were something I disagreed on with RexLex, I know that I need only
find something in the Bible to contradict his opinion, and I would expect
him to change his mind. But if I was unsure about a particular point of
yours, I wouldn't know where to begin to seek support for it, one way or
the other. I've gotten the impression that you've effectively built a kind
of moat around your belief system whereby no one can touch you. For instance,
I've wondered how you can be sure that some of what you feel God is telling
you is not Satan putting thoughts into your head to try to deceive you. I
believe you mentioned that you don't believe in the Devil, so this has to be
disqualified as a valid means to test your opinions. What does one use to
bridge your moat? How do I challenge your ideas so that I can determine for
myself how much confidence I feel comfortable with placing in your words?

Michael, if I've gotten you mixed up with some other poster, or have
largely misrepresented you, please let me know and I'll apologize and
we can forget the whole thing! :-)

	In Him,

		Den

..................................................................
: Dennis M. Swanson : "No matter how long you live, remember that :
: swansond@csus.edu : you will be dead much longer."  Eccl. 11:8b :
:...................:.............................................:

[I hope people have noted that there is a range of liberal opinion
on this group.  Mike and I are probably on opposite ends.  --clh]