Derf
Well-known member
I suppose you mean "thief", where He comes, takes, and leaves. But if He wasn't there, then was, then wasn't. The absence alone is not enough to cause the melting/atomic explosion, since He wasn't there before He was, even if He won't be there after He was. These may be two different states, but all we have there is two similar states, separated by a different state. "Not there" then "there" (comes) then "not there" again. And if He's in the first "not there" state, and we still aren't melting with fervent heat, then the latter "not there" state is not sufficient reason for everything to melt.Reread, I think you'll catch your mistake.
Yes, but constant?Does He answer prayer? Wouldn't that be considered to be manipulation?
Here's the one that I gravitated toward:In such instance, if we went back to our alternating current (plugged in AC) and direct current (batteries DC), it'd be akin to getting plugged in, if we went with the hands-off thought. The issue is whether these 'hands-on' theologian are right, or the ones who say 'hands off' are correct and it boils down to how we read scripture. Reread your scripture, if it said what you thought it did, It'd have more weight.
Here is a point where we can see eye to eye: God is involved/relational to His creation, but isn't living 'in' it as best as I grasp scripture: Act 17:24 He is Spirit. Such intimates something like a different dimension and also intimates that the physical comes from Spirit which often confuses us as physical beings (Scientists thing dark-matter or matter existed always). Yet Acts 17:24 says 'in' Him.
I think pouring through these commentaries will be helpful toward your desire.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
For in him we live - The expression "in him" evidently means by him; by his originally forming us, and continually sustaining us.
But Barnes resorted to "evidentiary" meaning. So he needed some figurative leaning as well. "In" doesn't normally mean literally "forming and sustaining". It just doesn't.
But not solely by His sustaining power. I suppose if we are dead/blown to bits, there's no decision we can make, but while we're not in that condition, we can make decisions by the power He granted us, including to do wrong. So if He's not manipulating us to do wrong (please tell me you reject that idea), then His "sustaining power" isn't causing any decisions. We believers give Him sovereignty over our decisions if we're "plugged in" (abiding in Him). If not, then our decisions are going against His will until He decides to finally conform us to His will...by completely restricting our access to all that is good if we don't willingly conform.Yes, but...
"How free is free?"
We are given responsibility which means independence and a bit like the AC vs. DC discussion. Relationship means 'still plugged in' to a degree, meaning my decisions are functioning only by His sustaining power.
Well, if we areA good argument for DC is that God could have pulled the plug just before Eve took the fruit, shooed the serpent from the Garden, and plugged them back in. That it doesn't go down that way suggests that DC is the better analogy. Regardless, it is how we basically grasp Acts 17:24, John 15:5 and similar verses, that informs our opinions. It is an old debate, I'm not sure we'll conclude it here, but be informed by the ongoing thoughts over these specific scriptures.
It is why I think, for present, that AC vs DC helps and works for analogy.
There is a theological need to make sense of our autonomy and also, to remember 'you are not your own, you were bought with a price'
Are we talking about everybody in the body of Christ? Which would exclude those not a part of his body. So then it can't be talking about the same thing as "in Him we live and move and have our being", since that was to be universally applied to all men, believers or not.as well as "We being many, form one body, and each of us belongs to all the others."
So if there is a "not plugged in" condition, it isn't the same subject as "in Him we live and move and have our being."Living in a nation with a Declaration of Independence often has us thinking of our individual God-given rights. I'm pretty independent and especially as I get older with these 'pesky kids' need to remember we are lights on a hill and supposed to be interacting for the spread of the Gospel.
I think in a continuation just above, we 'can' be independent by choice, but 'take up your cross and follow me' is a call to be 'plugged in' such that I think it is something inbetween the respective views of AC vs DC. It seems, by analogy, both AC and DC.
So I think we're in agreement. It isn't literal.God isn't physical. Whenever I hear 'in' and scripture does use it, it isn't 'inside' as if God were a physical being. A lot of people hate mysteries, but this is one of mine, I have no idea how everything is 'in' Him. I'm not sure Panentheism from a Christian perspective does either. They certainly do not mean 'physically in.'
Ok. i get the two confused some.I think you'd agree with me that God certainly has manipulated your and my every decision because we 'no longer live to ourselves' as Scripture says. I'm not sure if analogy will work, but it is like we became DC. Adam and Eve were told they'd surely die and it seems the AC connection is the breaking point. It seems to me the answer, again however crude but serviceable the analogy: that we are both AC and DC. There is every sense that we recharge by the sun, by food, etc. on this planet for the sense that we have to get 'plugged in' to recharge/keep going. It seems Acts 17:24 emphasizes the 'plugged in' idea.
That is pantheism.
Yep. Are we in God in some other way? Spiritually (including the unbelievers)? I'm not sure. So I keep leaning toward the figurative.I reject that as well. I also reject any idea that God is physical such that we are 'inside' of Him physically yet when those who are saying we are 'in' Him else we'd combust, they are intimating a physical idea. So, for me, we aren't 'physically' in God in that way.
Only when we're dead do we not have our "physical" bodies. Jesus was resurrected in a physical body. So shall we be, it seems.One day we will not have physical bodies, and will not cease to exist 'in' Christ.
Ok.In a nutshell, I'm not sure if the universe would fly apart, just 'how' He sustains. In Him
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