So who DO you agree with?

This probably has already been said. Jesus got it right. And since there is no further revelation save what we already have from scriptures, reliance on scriptures is a good thing.

 

Some labels are a necessary evil IMO. However it is oh so easy to go over into carnality. ... some say I am of Apollo, I of Cephas, etc... Paul then asks: are you not carnal?

For this reason I don't like labels. However, some are necessary.

And BTW, the kind of shopping you mention above is what I experienced as a youth.

My grandparents were Italian immigrants and for 3 generations we lived in a "Little Italy" with a European style outdoor markets.

Nothing was labeled, you saw the commodity: chickens (slaughtered before your eyes), fish, fruit, vegetables, cheese, Terrone, etc., you examined it and bought it (or not). It still exists today but modernized and not quite so "earthy".


HankD

 

This is a continuation of of my previous post, had to attend to another matter...

In a spiritual parallel, the early church had very few "labels" and only apostolic writings

Along similar spiritual lines, in lesson preparation, I like to read the raw text, chapter(s), book(s) without a commentary and/or before going over supplied lesson materials first then read differing commentators with different "labels" to get the interpretation of others.

But, I agree with your analogy, then again as I said, labels are a necessary evil (so to speak).

Notably, some labeled folk cause more division and strife than others and actually seem to want or enjoy stirring up trouble among the brethren.

This IMO is the biggest problem with labels: us/we the labeled promoting our label agenda.

HankD

 

I didn't say I wished all theological views and systems would disapppear. I said I wished this topic would disappear from the BB's forum on Baptist Theology. I'm tired of it. You were not around, I don't think, when we had a Calvinist/non-Calvinist/Arminian forum. I had enough discussions there to last a lifetime!

PLEASE DO NOT COMPARE ME TO THE JWs! That is an insult and unnecessary. Nothing I said validates that comparison. Please be more careful of comparing Christians to cultists.

 

Hmm, here it is again.

People here like me who refuse to "agree" or "disagree" with various groups are maligned. I refuse to put myself into a group or category on this issue because I have no desire to and I do not need to. God knows what I believe and His word is the standard, not some group.

 

Just as a sidenote: There is a current advert on the telly which offers a free KJV of the Bible just for responding to their post box. It is there by the Mormons!

A theological system is there to promote consistency in thought. All theological views are taken from scripture.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Systematic theology is an effort to believe things in such a way as to not contradict yourself. Contradiction indicates an error somewhere, but God's word never affirms error, so a contradiction in your thinking means that you are departing from God's word somewhere.

If you say that Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and you say that the whole world lies in the arms of the wicked one, and that God loved the world, and that we are not to love the world, each of these things needs to be understood in some particular way so as to make them all agree with one another.

It is bad form to deliberately believe nonsense and label it "mystery" or some other religious-sounding word. Those who work hard at understanding scripture eventually discover that some very smart people worked on these problems for several hundred years and have pretty well delineated all of the internally consistent options. The student must decide between those options, or else he will be trying to excel them all with an even better, more scriptural, more internally consistent system than has ever been developed before.

The result is always far, far from that.

 

I am all for systematic theology. I've studied it. I have even defended it here before. But I don't think that is what the OP is getting at. This is a thread trying to get people to label themselves in the endless debate that is often brought up here by some.

 

Yes, indeed; may that endless debate be once again consigned to the eternal darkness of a reinstituted C-A forum (thunderous applause).

But still, soteriology is one key factor in systematic theology, and the earlier posts are correct (in my opinion) when they maintain that everyone falls into a category unless he is so wobbly that he staggers out of one category and into another all through the night.

 

Whoever reflects best the biblical data, got it right.

 

I am totally for reinstituting that forum and have said so many times. That way, it will keep this topic from proliferating like a virus in the other forums.

Believe it or not, many people have studied soteriology without aligning themselves with a man-made label.

 

One need not align himself with a label in order for the label to fit him precisely. If someone's thought is biblical (more or less) and consistent, he believes something that someone has already discovered long ago; and that set of beliefs was labeled long ago.

 

I know many calvinistic Baptists that resent being called calvinist, but that's exactly what they are. The most common objection is that 'we were before Calvin'. But if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck.......

 

It is very difficult to be consistent in how labels are used. If someone has never read a word of Calvin, he can get the impression that you're accusing him of "following" Calvin, which would be a false accusation.

Probably not one of us is willing to submit his judgment to a man or a system. I'm an Arminian, but I don't care two hoots what Arminius thought about this or that. The label is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Labels are also tools for slander. When used in debate, they are an effort to drag the opponent into whatever opprobrium is commonly attached to the label. As such, their function is not to clarify truth, but to evade it by misdirecting the listeners and "poisoning the well."

But we need a name for the Calvinistic Baptists. What do we call them? We can't call them "Biblicist," since the Arminians already have that term. "Augustinian" is too Catholic. "Reformed" implies that Baptists needed reforming at some point, which they deny. "Doctrines of Grace" has too many syllables by the time you turn it into an adjective. "Predestinarian" has a similar problem. "Particular" works for theologians, but pagans reading the sign out front would interpret that as "picky."

I like "Spurgeonesque." Or maybe "Pinky."

 

Pesonally, I like Pinky. I've gleaned much from his writings over the years. [ha, lots of those labels have too many syllables]

 

What about Absolute Sovereigntist then?

Cheers,

Jim