Terri Schiavo Update

To what theological tradition, then, does your assembly belong?

 

Why do you ask?

 

I want to find out if God, blessed be He, is a barbarian.

 

You're asking the wrong guy. KansasBaptist said the death penalty was barbaric, not I.

But if you really want to know, we'd probably be closest to the Baptist General Conference in our theology and polity.

BLD

 

No, it's your phrase. I really want to know.

 

See my answer above in my edited post.

By the way, if you go to the last post on page 5 of this thread, you'll see that kansasbaptist said the death penalty was a "barbaric practice." That's where my question came from.

BLD

 

So, do you believe that God (incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth) commanded you to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and that He meant it when He said "This is My body" and "This is My blood"? Do you believe it when He said "Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven, whose sins you retain, they are retained"? Do you believe that God meant it when He inspired St Peter to state that "baptism now saves you"?

 

Janko,
Why are you asking me all these loaded theological questions? What does this have to do with the subject at hand?

If you really want to discuss it, start another thread and state your views on these issues first. That's usually the way it works.

BTW, just to make you happy -- the answer is "Yes."

BLD

 

We're getting there. So you believe that the stuff in the plate and cup(s) is the actual body and blood of Christ, the same actual physical body that hung on the cross and the same actual blood that was shed, and that you eat and drink the same with your physical mouth?

 

No, I don't. And you know what, they've yet to find the remains of Jesus in one person's stomach or stool who does believe it.

I'm done playing cat and mouse. If you have something to say, say it.

BLD

 

BLD,

The traditional Jewish answer to your excellent question is, God sometimes requires something to forstall humans demanding something worse.

The traditional view of animal sacrifice, for example, is not that God needs the blood of dead animals to satisfy His sense of justice but rather, by allowing ANIMALsacrifice He thereby forbade HUMAN sacrifice.

I suggest that in a primitive, tribal, blood fued ridden society, no one would take seriously a God who forbade capital punishment. But it could be made ALMOST impossible...

See?

 

God Also Commanded

God also commanded "Thou Shall Not Kill". Four simple words, my friends.

Perhaps God allowed the execution of his only begotten son so that we would always remember the horror and suffering of it and be discouraged from doing it ever again. Just a thought.

 

God forbid I should play cat and mouse on so serious a matter!

We have established, then, that the fact of God saying something in so many words does not obligate you, in your view, to take them in their plain, literal meaning.

(I happen to agree that the death penalty is an option in light of what Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says in Romans about the magistrate bearing the sword at God's appointment.)

But if you do not take the words of God literally when He says "this is My body...blood" and "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood" then you are choosing which words of God to take literally and as commands and which not so to take. This is, of course, your perfect hermeneutical right.

No different hermeneutical exercise is required for others on Biblical grounds (or other grounds, while we're at it) to object to the death penalty.

Therefore--here we arrive at your starting point--you cannot impute to those who object to the death penalty the silly notion--you will stipulate to it being a silly notion, I trust--that God is a barbarian.

(Of course, since the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the Christian Testament in Greek--my apologies to Dr Clifton, who takes a somewhat different view--He cannot technically be a barbarian in any case, since He evidently speaks Greek!)

Now, having been led by right reason to drop your imputation of blasphemy to kansasbaptist and others who do not approve of the death penalty, perhaps you may also be led by the working of the Holy Spirit through the Word to repent of your sin of bearing false witness against your neighbours by calling them Nazis and equating them with Hitler (yimach shemo). One may hope so.

(My profuse apologies to the non-Christians on this thread. You may well be amused or bemused by all this. I should have told you at the outset to scroll past all this and carry on. Sorry. This is very old-fashioned and deadly earnest Lutheran cura animarum. BLD thought that I wasn't serious about my Lutheranism, something on which, I suppose, opinions may differ. Yet I assure you of my utter seriousness in this exchange, and equally seriously thank you for your patience at this long detour leading back to the discussion without slander, one hopes, of poor Mrs Schiavo's fate. Whether or not BLD repents of his sin in breaking the Eighth Commandment we must leave in the hands of God.)

 

Judge Orders Schiavo's Feeding Tube to Remain for Three Weeks

Breaking from NewsMax.com

Supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to life scored a big victory late Friday when a Florida judge ordered her feeding tube to remain for an additional three weeks.

"Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer made his decision after pleadings from the woman's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, that they need more time to pursue additional medical tests which might prove their daughter has more mental capabilities than previously thought." the AP reported.

The judge's stay will remain until March 18. But the legal battle to keep Terri alive is far from over.

Fla. Governor Jeb Bush has also ordered the state to investigate allegations Schiavo has been abused or mistreated. The state is reportedly seeking a 60-day delay in removal of the feeding tube.

 

O Mighty Janko,
We all bow to your superior knowledge. Thou art great, and the smartest dude on earth. Thankest Thou, for granting us mere non-Lutheran pions a moment in Your presence.

Amen!

BTW, I also don't take Jesus literally when He says, "I am the door." Do you?

BLD

 

Moses our teacher, who received from the hand of God the Eighth Commandment, was the meekest, um, dude on earth. Far from being the smartest, um, dude on earth, I am merely a transplanted Carpathian village idiot, but my conscience is captive to the Word of God, to borrow a phrase from a Saxon professor at a third-tier university some time back.

I know nothing of mathematics or physics. What's a pion?

 

Hm. I always read that as, "Thou shalt not murder".

I'll look up the verb, unless someone knows it of the top of his head?

 

Isn't that slang for a pi-meson?

 

Maybe that was it. I don't know what that is either, actually.

 

Ooops...Got me! I meant peon.

So is Jesus a door?

BLD