Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Corinthians - Revelation

1 Corinthians 8:12
Can these words be reconciled with the words of Romans 9:15-16, which state that it is not man's will nor exertion upon which God's mercy rests, but upon God's will alone? No, they can't.
Galatians 5:17-23
A case could be made that there are examples from these lists which are not mutually exclusive, most notably party spirit/carousing/fornication, and love/joy. Very few people carouse without joy. I suppose a purist reading of these verses would be that there can be no pure love or joy in carousing (or fornication, for that matter). But these verses assert that fornication and carousing are acts which are unqualifiedly against Heaven. The logical extension of these assertions is that a world of religiously pure humans would be a world without fornication, and thus a world without humans. And this line of thinking runs into another problem, namely whether God could create, "in Its image", beings of the flesh, and therefore, by these verses, innately evil beings. To reconcile these verses with logic and reason stretches these qualities beyond their limits.
1 Timothy 2:12
Oh, Paul. Paul, Paul, Paul...
1 Peter 4:6, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6
Do these words imply that loss or gain of spiritual salvation is possible even for those "beyond the grave"? Hmmm…these words certainly seem to add a suspiciously unmentioned qualification to the earlier New Testament assertions that eternal salvation is the automatic reward for earthly faith.
Revelation 14:3-5
An interesting passage for christians who excuse their moral failures by saying that “only God can be perfect".
Revelation 22:15
The crowning vindication for cat lovers everywhere.

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