Angels or Saints? Part 4

A continuation of Angels and Saints Part 3

James says:

It is becoming tough to dialogue with you, and here is why:

Every time I refute what you state, instead of dealing with the refutation, you simply ignore the refutation and restate your position. As long as you continue this strategy no one will want to give you the time of day.

I have to ask myself, is it fruitful to dialogue with someone who has repeatedly disregarded the Greek lexicon or who doesn’t care about which part of speech is attributed to a particular word?

Is it sound to dialogue with someone that has a disdain for logic (i.e. “All of the word play in the world”)? You use straw men all over the place and leave me to have to remind you what my actual argument is as opposed to what you think it is.

I have not equated “falling into temptation” with being “blameable” this is something that you have concocted to deflect from the main point: the bible clearly teaches that the moment we believe unto salvation we are considered blameless. Case closed. Why don’t you argue with the verses I provided earlier. Nope, why should you? Just disregard those verses the same way you have disregarded all of my responses, choosing to move the goal post.

Since this is hard for you to grasp allow me to emphasize it with caps: DESCRIBING SOMETHING AS HOLY IS DIFFERENT FROM DEFINING SOMETHING AS HOLY. ANGELS ARE NOT DEFINED AS HAGIOS, THEY ARE ONLY DESCRIBED AS SUCH. SAINTS ON THE OTHER HAND ARE DEFINED AS “HAGIOS.” You keep trying to mutilate a dead horse.

I pray that you can meditate on that nugget of truth.

Your disrespectful paraphrase: “God can do anything He wants” misses the entire point I was trying to convey (but it does begin to betray your lack of attention to detail). You have no rules of interpretation. You despise logic. You can’t discern between a necessary inference (WE ARE ALREADY BLAMELESS – Jude 1:1, 1 Corinthians 1:2) and an invalid inference (i.e. Paul believes that we could incur blame at some point). My advice for you is to invest the time in learning the rules for how to reason correctly. This is not an insult but simply good advice. It is irrational to engage someone in dialogue who dismisses logic as “word play”, to do such is to subscribe to the hermeneutic of relativism – that is to say, your rules of interpretation are no better than mine. This is the essence of futility.

I’m going to have to spurn your request to join your facebook eschatology group, for me, talking to more than one person at a time is a good recipe for confusion.

J&J says:

James,

First of all, if you’re not able to grasp the problem with your interpretation of 1 Thess 3:13, there’s no need to discuss it further.

Secondly, “‘HAGIOS’ IS NOT SYNONYMOUS WITH ‘CHURCH SAINTS'”.

Thirdly, Hunt’s interpretation of 2 Thess 2 has holes. The more I read verses 1-3, the more I realize that there is nothing in the text which guarantees that they had already been “shaken in mind”. That is always assumed. That is to say, Paul was equally likely to have been preemptively cautioning them not to be shaken by anyone suggesting a “rapture-first” chronology. Strengthening that point is the fact that Paul gave a few possible ways by which they could be deceived (in spirit, by word, or by letter), which makes it less likely that they had already been deceived by any given modality as of yet. Also, he didn’t say that they had included any fear of theirs in a letter to him…

[John also included 6-7 pages of boiler plate material that was not relevant to this discussion thus it is excluded for brevity sake]

James says:

If I had known that you would not seriously read any of the responses I wouldn’t have wasted my time trying to reason with you. It is easy to copy and paste boiler plate responses without addressing specific charges that have been raised. It is harder to admit that you believe in a view simply for the sake of believing. Anyone reading our dialogue will understand what I’m trying to say here. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. I never expected to encounter a modern day believer who claimed to comprehend eschatology and yet did not even understand the notion of justification nor sanctification. Heed the words of the Psalmist: Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Perhaps you are still blameable. Regarding myself, Paul asks, who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth! Who is he that condemneth?