Using repetitive covenant renewal to achieve temporary forgiveness (say, every week or year) is antithetical to the heart of the gospel.
If you’re under the Old Covenant, you feel the futility of having to repetitively renew your covenants, over and over and over again. Over and over. Never enough.
If you’re under the New Covenant, you feel the assurance of the finished “once and for all” work of Jesus Christ. The New Covenant is permanent, because the work of Christ on the cross is FINISHED.
Why would I need to be sealed to a web of people in the temple, when I already belong to all who belong to Christ? All in Christ are sealed to Christ, and all in Christ are sealed to those sealed in Christ. All those who belong to Christ, belong to those who belong to Christ.
Paul taught not to boast in men, because all are ours in Christ Jesus:
“So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)
This is profound.
“The human heart cannot satisfy the human heart.” (Tom Stroman)
(Update: see AdamGod.com)
Here is the relevant portion from Young’s sermon:
“Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is MICHAEL, the Archangel, the ANCIENT OF DAYS! about whom holy men have written and spoken–HE is our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom WE have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later. They came here, organized the raw material, and arranged in their order the herbs of the field, the trees, the apple, the peach, the plum, the pear, and every other fruit that is desirable and good for man; the seed was brought from another sphere, and planted in this earth. The thistle, and thorn, the brier, and the obnoxious weed did not appear until after the earth was cursed. When Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, their bodies became mortal from its effects, and therefore their offspring were mortal. When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family; and when he took a tabernacle, it was begotten by his Father in heaven, after the same manner as the tabernacles of Cain, Abel, and the rest of the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve; from the fruits of the earth, the first earthly tabernacles were originated by the Father, and so on in succession. I could tell you much more about this; but were I to tell you the whole truth, blasphemy would be nothing to it, in the estimation of the superstitious and over-righteous of mankind. However, I have told you the truth as far as I have gone.” (General Conference, April 9th, 1852, Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 50)
1. Hosea Stout wrote in his journal that same day:
“Stormy morning. Attended conference. House much crowded, did not stay in the house long. Afternoon was not in because of the crowd. Another meeting this evening. President Brigham Young taught that Adam was the father of Jesus and the only God to us. That he came to this world in a resurrected body and etc. more hereafter.”
By Harvard lecturer Michael Sandel:
Quoting from the lecture:
“This was in the Goodridge case, which required the state of Massachusetts to extend marriage to same-sex couples. The court started out… well, the court was conflicted. If you read that opinion carefully, the court was conflicted as between the two positions we’ve just been hearing, defended by Andréa and by Dan. The Court begins– and this is Chief Justice Margaret Marhsall’s opinion– it begins with an attempt at liberal neutrality. In other words, at issue is not the moral worth of the choice, but the right of the individual to make it. So this is the liberal neutral strand in the court opinion; the voluntarist strand, the one that emphasizes autonomy, choice, consent. But the court seemed to realize that the liberal case, the neutral case for recognizing same-sex marriage doesn’t succeed, doesn’t get you all the way to that position. Because if it were only a matter of respect for individual autonomy, if government were truly neutral on the moral worth of voluntary intimate relationships, then it should adopt a different policy, which is to remove government and the state altogether from according recognition to certain associations, certain kinds of unions rather than others. If government really must be neutral, then the consistent position is what we here have been describing as the third position– the one defended in the article by Michael Kinsley, who argues for the abolition of marriage, at least as a state function. Perhaps a better term for this is the disestablishment of religion. This is Kinsley’s proposal. He points out that the reason for the opposition to same-sex marriage is that it would go beyond neutral toleration and give same-sex marriage a government stamp of approval. That’s at the heart of the dispute. In Aristotle’s terms, at issue here is the proper distribution of offices and honors; a matter of social recognition. Same-sex marriage can’t be justified on the basis of liberal neutrality or non-discrimination or autonomy rights alone, because the question at stake in the public debate is whether same-sex unions have moral worth, whether they’re worthy of honor and recognition, and whether they fit the purpose of the social institution of marriage. So Kinsley says, ‘You want to be neutral?’ This is Kinsley. But this is not the position that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts wanted. They didn’t call for the abolition or for the disestablishment of marriage. The court did not question government’s role in conferring social recognition on some intimate associations rather than others. To the contrary, the court waxes eloquent about marriage as, ‘One of our community’s most rewarding and cherished institutions,’ and then it goes on to expand the definition of marriage to include partners of the same sex. And in doing so, it acknowledges that marriage is more than a matter of tolerating choices that individuals make; it’s also a matter of social recognition and honor. As Justice Marshall wrote: This is the court. Now, this is reaching well beyond liberal neutrality. This is celebrating and affirming marriage as an honorific, as a form of public recognition, and therefore, the court found that it couldn’t avoid the debate about the telos of marriage. Justice Marshall’s opinion considers and rejects the notion that the primary purpose of marriage is procreation. She points out that there’s no requirement that applicants for a marriage license who are heterosexuals attest to their ability or their intention to conceive children. Fertility is not a condition of marriage. People who cannot stir from their death bed may marry. So she advances all kinds of arguments, along the lines that we began last time, about what the proper end, the essential nature, the telos of marriage is. And she concludes: Now, nothing I’ve said about this court opinion is an argument for or against same-sex marriage, but it is an argument against the claim that you can favor or oppose same-sex marriage while remaining neutral on the underlying moral and religious questions. So all of this is to suggest that at least in some of the hotly contested debates about justice and rights that we have in our society, the attempt to be neutral, the attempt to say, ‘It’s just a matter of consent and choice and autonomy; we take no stand,’ that doesn’t succeed. Even the court, which wants to be neutral on these moral and religious disputes, finds that it can’t.”
Is the atheist throat big enough to swallow the implications of moral non-realism?
“If we reject the possibility of objective morality, then we must say that our own basic commitments are _never_ wrong (unless, of course, they are _always_ wrong, as the error theorist maintains)… Subjectivism’s or relativism’s picture of ethics as a wholly conventional enterprise entails a kind of moral infallibility for individuals or societies. No matter the content of their ultimate commitments, these are never wrong. This sort of infallibility is hard to swallow in its own right.” – Russ Shafer-Landau, “Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?”, p. 17 http://amzn.com/0195168739
“Daddy, can we play trains?” (John Caleb)
“Sorry buddy, it’s bed-time. We can play tomorrow.” (Me)
“Ohhh I don’t want to play later. I want to play right now. We should play trains the whole day. And drink chocolate milk. That would be the greatest, mostest best day ever. And I would love that. Oh please? Pretty pretty please?” (John Caleb)
“Evangelism is the cure for ugly feet.” (Bill McKeever)
“The Genesis account differs markedly from the other cosmogonies in its assumption of monotheism. There is a single Creator, and no other gods are involved in the creative acts, either as helpers or as opponents. There is no primeval goddess, so the model of procreation for the creative process has no place in the account. It is also notable that there is no theogony as a preface to cosmology. The existence of the Creator is assumed, and there is no attempt to explain it. There are no lesser gods whose coming into being needs explaining. Some scholars think that the plural in Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make …”) is a remnant of an earlier polytheistic account. However, they agree that this is not the significance of the plural in the account as it stands. Most take it as either an address to the heavenly council (Wenham) or as a plural of self-deliberation (Westermann)…
“The use of speech as a metaphor indicates that the divine creative activity is voluntary, rational and effortless. There is no struggle or conflict, as in some of the other cosmogonies.” (T. Desmond Alexander, David Weston Baker, Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, p. 135)
I Am Aaron Shafovaloff 