Evoken
New member
Why do you cite those verses as if they have anything to do with the descent of Lord Jesus into Hell? The first three, which relate his cry on the cross, do not imply any separation, and this I'll address below, and he was still alive when he said that anyway, so the verses simply do not say anything about the separation of the righteous dead from God. The fourth one occurs after his resurrection and is thus irrelevant to the question of his descent into Hell. That he was referring to his bodily resurrection, something you object to, I also address below.
Listen to what you said right in the beginning of your post, in response to my comments that at first you were not clear that you were talking about the incarnation but that you seemed to be speaking about God (i.e. the Trinity): "There is no difference." But now what you do say? "I do not say that God (i.e. the entire Trinity) died but that God the Son, the second member of the Trinity died".. Make up your mind. Anyway, assuming that you only mean the Son, the spiritual death of the Son as produced from his alleged separation from the Father is something you have to substantiate both on rational and Scriptural grounds. You have yet to do this.
Greek? We don't need no stinking Greek, Clete! God's simplicity is a corollary of his infinity, whose infinity is deducible from his own self-existence and is thus a metaphysical necessity. For the very concept of infinity excludes the notion of parts or composition. An infinite set of individual parts is a contradiction of terms (specially when speaking about a spiritual being). Both of these truths can be attained by the natural light of reason and are not articles of faith but preambles to faith. From Scripture we know that God is a spirit (John 4:24, 2 Corinthians 3:17, Isaiah 31:3) and that he is thus non-corporeal (Luke 24:39), non-spatial, unbounded (Psalm 138:7-8, Jeremias 23:24, 2 Chronicles 2:6), immeasurable (1 Kings 8:27, Job 11:9), self-existing, in other words, infinite. His infinity is also the very root of the infinite perfections we see attributed to him throughout Scripture. God's simplicity, far from being mere Greek fluff, is a truth rooted in reason and revelation.
Not really, for spiritual death may be understood in two ways. First in a theological sense by which one understands it to mean the state of the damned, who are separated from God and endure eternal torments in Hell. These souls are not truly dead (otherwise they would not suffer the pains of Hell) but are in a state of being which we refer to as spiritual death. Spiritual death may be also understood in a less theological way simply as meaning that a soul is no longer living. And it is only in this sense that spiritual death can be attributed to God.
That spiritual life was restored by obedience from the spiritual death inherited form Adam is a truth we see affirmed by St. Paul: "For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just." (Romans 5:19). If you are wondering about our own individual cases, note that Lord Jesus puts the keeping of his commandments (not just bare faith) as a condition for being saved (Mark 10:17-19) and as a sign of loving him (John 14:15). Same goes with baptism, he says if you believe and are baptized you shall be saved (Mark 16:16). Thus obedience is central to the issue.
Yes, Christ was given up to be humiliated and crucified, it does not follows that he was spiritually dead, separated from the Father or anything like that. The Son, who is innocent and without blemish, a perfect lamb, without sin and was given up for our sake. Only sinners are spiritually dead or separated from God.
Our condition is spiritual as well as physical but it simply does not follows that to correct our condition of spiritual death Christ had to become spiritually dead himself. That is like saying that a doctor has to first suffer from the illness before he can cure it on the patient. The spiritual death of humanity is the very thing he came to fix and spiritual death is the result of sin. Neither God nor Christ sinned nor can they sin. Spiritual death is separation from God (not just God the Father, that is something made up by yourself), and Christ being God cannot be separated from himself.
Not just a perfect human being, which Christ without a doubt was, but one of infinite value, since the offense made was infinite. And this only a divine person could provide, so making new Adams would not solve anything, thus a divine person incarnated and it's union with human nature elevated the human nature and endowed it the infinite value that was needed for the sacrifice.
Read the entire Psalm, he was alluding to the whole and given it's triumphant ending, far from being a cry of despair, is one that carries the hope of vindication. Specially of relevance is the verse which says: "Let all the seed of Israel fear him: because he hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of the poor man. Neither hath he turned away his face from me: and when I cried to him he heard me." (Psalm 21:25).
It is also important to note other details which are given in the gospel right at that moment. For example, it was right at the ninth hour that it is said that the cry was made (Matthew 27:46), why? Because the ninth hour is the exact time of the Jewish afternoon prayers (Acts 3:1, Acts 10:30). Christ was also a faithful Jew after all so it is only logical that he would say his prayers at the appointed hours and this is his last prayer. Note also the three hours of darkness that go before that (Matthew 27:45), his claim that: "It is consummated." (John 19:30), right after they gave him the vinegar to drink, the events that occur right after he gave up his spirit (Matthew 27:51-53) and the comment of the guard who realized who Christ was (Matthew 27:54). All these events point clearly to an eschatological sign, much more than a simple prayer and certainly not a feeling of being separated from the Father, instead it is his declaration that he is the fulfillment of that Psalm, which was seen by the Jews, many of whom were present there, as a Messianic Psalm and which was also recognized by them by he simply saying the first phrase of the Psalm.
The one that seems either ignore or lack an understanding of the Trinity is yourself. I point it out repeatedly because it is nonsensical to say that the Son was separated from the Father. It is three persons sharing the one divine essence. It is one God, three persons, not three gods, not three essences, not three beings...only one. You cannot separate the three persons without separating the essence and thus ending up with two or even three separate gods. Nor can you separate each person without this having an impact on the others. There is hierarchical relationship between the persons, which admits no separation between them.
The Son proceeds from the Father (John 8:42) by way of generation, which is why he is related to him as Son to Father in the first place (John 1:14,18, John 3:18) and is thus called the first born of every creature (Colossians 1:15) and the figure of his substance (Hebrews 1:3). Christ is not just some person wholly different from the Father, but he is a perfect image of the Father, all the Father is and has he has as well. This is why we see him say that he is in the Father as the Father is in him and that it is not him but the Father who does the works he does (John 14:10), that whomever has seen him has already seen the Father (John 14:9) and that he and the Father are one (John 10:30). He is the Word of the Father, which is to say his Wisdom, without which nothing that was made was made (see Proverbs 8:23-30 and compare with John 1:1-4). Speculatively the relationship between the Father and the Son may be explained by reference to the intellectual activity of the soul, which, by knowing itself produces an image or figure of itself. In this sense one may understand how the generation of the Son occurs through an activity of the Father which produces a likeness of himself, namely cognition.
As far as the Holy Spirit goes, he proceeds from the Father and the Son together. This is seen in Scripture where Lord Jesus says that he will send the Paraclete from the Father (John 15:26), we also see that he speaks what he hears from the Son and also receives from Him everything that the Father has which Christ also has (John 16:13-15). Following the same mode of explanation above, as the Son is generated from the Father's perfect knowledge of himself, the Spirit proceeds from the Father's perfect love of himself. Or put another way, from the mutual and eternal love of the Father and the Son.
So, there is a hierarchical relationship between the persons and this cannot be separated. That is why I told you in a previous post that if you separate the Son from the Father, the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from both, would not just be separated, but simply vanish.
Which one is it? Is Hell separation from God or just God the Father? You used both in that paragraph. If you say it is separation from God, then you are correct, but if you say it is separation from the Father only, then it would be good for you to produce a rational explanation with Scriptural evidence to back up that claim.
You are operating under the assumption that God cannot go to the abode of the dead to release the just, simply because the state of the souls in there is such that they are separated from him, and thus you propose the idea that the Son had to be separated from the Father in order for him to be able to release the just. This simply does not follows. You also fail to realize that God being infinite and everywhere present is also present in Hell (Psalm 138:8). What changes is the state of the soul in Hell, which does not experiences God or his love in anyway, but rather endures his just punishments. Very much like a deaf person, who can be around noise and not hear any of it.
We normally talk about Hell when referring to the abode of the just, but it is clear that the Jews believed in a place for the wicked and another for the just, which is also called Abraham's Bosom. Both the just and the wicked were not believed to rest in the same place, this distinction is seen in the gospel, where the rich man, who is being tormented in Hell pleads Abraham (Luke 16:22). So, it does not follows that the just who were sleeping, given the joyful state they were in, were entirely cut off from God simply because the gates of Heaven had not been opened yet. Christ soul did not descend to the place of the wicked, but only to the place of the just,
There is no need for wanting to make it say anything else, for if one considers the whole message of the gospel, most notably what Christ says about himself and the Father, and not just verses in isolation, and when one uses reason, something that you seem to throw out of the window when it comes to interpreting Scripture, that he had not ascended bodily is the correct interpretation of that verse. As he says "I am in the Father and the Father in me" (John 14:10). Also note that Christ says almost the same thing in that chapter, right after saying that he says: "Because I go to the Father" (John 14:13) and "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Yet a little while: and the world seeth me no more. But you see me: because I live, and you shall live." (John 14:18-19). It is very clear that he is referring to his bodily ascension and not to any separation from the Father.
A separation of the Son from the Father is nowhere implied in Scripture and as I explain below, is inconsistent with reason and monotheism, which is explicitly affirmed in it.
If I grab a block of clay and cut it in half, both halves remain clay, they don't stop being clay nor do they lose their properties. But I end up not with one piece of clay but two. That is precisely what you are doing with the Trinity. Now you have two gods, one is God the Son and the other is God the Father and the Holy Ghost. Your excuses about not only not knowing but also not needing to know not withstanding, your statements contradict the Scriptures, which affirm in the clearest terms that there is only one God, and also reason, because you are saying that a thing can be one and three in the same respect. That is, that A can be both A and not A. That the Son remained God is not the issue at all, the issue is wether we are still dealing with one God. You seem to think that the persons are three separate gods that like transformers can unite and divide themselves at will, that is not monotheism nor the Trinity, that is Tritheism and it is irrational. That there is only one God is something we can also deduce from his infinity, for it is contradictory to say that there are two infinite beings, for neither of them would be infinite in the first place. It is also contradictory to say that an infinite God divided or separated some part of himself and that this part remained equally God and thus equally infinite as the very thing it was separated from. The "exact nature of that separation" is not clear because the very idea is nonsensical, if it were even consistent with logic, you would have at least tried to give a rational explanation for it.
A figure of speech? The context doesn't even suggests that. You are also ignoring the fact that he repeats it in other places, and even uses it as a means to persuade others to believe in him (John 14:10). It is very clear that the Son does nothing without the Father, just as the Spirit does nothing without the Father and the Son. While the persons are distinct from one another by virtue of their relations, they are not separate or independent from each other as to act completely independent from one another. While the second person was that incarnated, the incarnation itself was brought about by the whole trinity. This we know by looking at how the act is attributed to each of the persons in different places (Father: John 3:16-17, 1 John 4:9, Son: Philippians 2:7, Holy Ghost: Matthew 1:18, Luke 1:35).
The concepts of unity and diversity may be equally ultimate, sure but that does not lends support to your idea that one of the persons can be separated from the other two, for that destroys the unity which, as you just said is equally ultimate with the diversity. In fact the very idea of separation is excluded in the article you linked to: "God, as self-sufficient, as the One in whom the One and the Many are equally ultimate, is the One in whom the persons of the Trinity are interchangeably exhaustive". Note the emphasis made on "One", there is only one God, the Trinity of persons admits no division or separation between the other. God is one being in three persons, all three having a common single essence. By proposing a separation of the Father and the Son you destroy unity and end up only with diversity. You end up with two beings, one with one person and the other with two persons. It is no longer one being in three persons. There are no plural aspects in God other than the divine relations which are not divisions in God nor parts. There is no plurality of nature or essences or beings in God. He is a single being, not three.
That my position is unbiblical is something you have yet to demonstrate. That you do not consider the "opinions of men" authoritative is nonsense, for the very canon of Scriptures you accept from men and take their conclusions as authoritative. You also accept the judgement of "scholars" who decode manuscripts, produce new translations and the like when it comes to picking which version of the Scriptures (out of the thousands that are available) you use. So don't give me the canard that you don't find the opinion of men authoritative in matters of doctrine for your very position presupposes it. Your are at the mercy of "scholars" when it comes to the accuracy and meaning of the Scriptures and at the mercy of men, who determined by councils (or personal whims, as far as others goes) what books belong to the canon and what books do not.
Don't say either that Scripture interprets itself, as if Scripture had a voice that corrects your own interpretation of it as you read it. Scripture, like every book, does not interprets itself but stands in need of interpretation by the reader, in order words... by men. This is why you (not speaking about you in particular) read books and Scripture commentaries written by other men that explain things about Scripture, in order to form an interpretation of them. That you do not consider them "authoritative" is irrelevant because they still influence and shape your reading and interpretation of Scripture.
You as well as every other presuppositionalist treat the Scriptures as an axiom, but the very definition of an axiom (self-evident principle which one must assume in order to deny or affirm it, Any Rand) excludes the Scriptures from being axiomatic in any way. For if that were true, they would not be subject to the prior revision and correction of scholars. The very idea of a book being axiomatic is incoherent. One must first learn the contents of the book before grasping it's truth. The book must be written, edited, printed, etc before one can even begin reading it. One does not assumes the truth of the book in order to learn the truth it contains. Much less do scholars assume it's truth in order to translate some manuscript or produce some translation or version of the Scriptures. So the final authority as far as the true sense of Scripture goes for the adherent of Sola Scriptura is the scholar and it is at the mercy of him that he finds himself. So, from top to bottom and from left to right, you rely in the "opinions" of men, including your own interpretation of the Scriptures, which is itself the opinion of a man. Saying that you don't is like a man who used a stair to get to the roof of a house, kicked the stairs off the roof and then claimed that he got there without a stair.
If you want to talk about unbiblical positions, let's talk about your premise of Sola Scriptura and see how it fares in light of Scripture. Care to show where the idea is even hinted at in the Scriptures? Or where we see in Scripture that Christ left any writings of his own or commanded the apostles to write anything? Or even where he leaves us a book? To save you time, don't bother, you will not find it. The very idea is without Scriptural foundation and your position is therefore "unbiblical". On the other hand, I can establish my position from the Scriptures themselves and show not only that the Scriptures do no have primacy on matters of doctrine but that it is The Church who has it and not only that Lord Jesus did not write anything nor did he gave us a book but that he founded a Church.
The Scriptures themselves show that they are easily distorted and that they are not to be interpreted privately which is why St. Peter warned against private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20-21) and also against those who distort the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:16). In answer to Philip, who asked "Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?" the man says "And how can I, unless some man shew me?" (Acts 8:30-31). The Scriptures themselves attest that they stand in need of an authoritative interpreter and that while they are profitable for teaching, they are not sufficient in themselves and not everything is written in them (John 21:25). What we are clearly told in Scripture is that Lord Jesus built a Church, not a book (Matthew 16:18-19). Which is why when some dispute cannot be settled among believers, he does not tells people listen to the Scripture or to anyone else, but to The Church (Matthew 18:16-17). This is also the reason why St. Paul calls not the Scriptures but The Church, "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). So, the very Scriptures themselves point to something beyond themselves as possessing the authority in matters of doctrine. You may not like it, but that is what the Scriptures say and while you may not care about it, that is too what the historical testimony down to the earliest Christians says as well. The canon was not even fixed for the first hundred years of Christianity, it quite simply does not has primacy over everything.
The idea is of Sola Scriptura is also contrary to reason, for it would entail that God left us a book on the knowledge of which hangs our eternal destiny at the mercy whatever individual gets its hands on it, this after warning us through the same Scriptures that they are "hard to understand". That is a God who is irresponsible and who acts irrationally, not a loving God who loves his children and who as he himself said would not leave us orphans. The fact is, the Scriptures are a book and like all books, they stand in need of interpretation. If the very constitution needs an authoritative body to interpret it, how much more the Scriptures, which reveal things far more complex and important than that?
The humanity of Christ underwent death, not the divinity. It is the flesh that is crucified (Galatians 5:24), not the spirit.
That God sent his only begotten Son is not the question, the question is what does it means first for God to send his only begotten Son, for him to incarnate and thus become flesh and also for him to be crucified. You assume that God is just a man who sent his Son to be crucified. Things are not as simplistic as you want to put them. You are talking about an infinite, spiritual being, God himself, incarnating.
I have given you many reasons along with Scriptural references as to why the Father cannot be separated from the Son. I did so in my last post and have been doing so even more in this one. For you to say that I have done nothing to substantiate my claims is quite simply a lie.
This assumes in the first place that hell is merely separation from the Father, it is not, it is separation from God (the Trinity), period. If you believe otherwise, then provide a rational and Scriptural argument to support the idea. Also, if as you say, Jesus is the same God as the Father, then what does the Father has that Jesus does not has which makes Hell a separation from the Father only?
What Scripture have you quoted? In this entire post you only cited about five verses, four of which you cited at the very beginning of the post and three of them refer to the same thing, namely the cry of Christ in the cross, which I have already addressed above. Another one is simply Christ speaking of his bodily ascension, which I have also addressed above. That he had not yet ascended bodily, if you have been paying attention, is the only rational interpretation of that verse. Another verse which you cited has nothing to do with the subject at hand, and is actually one which can be directed at yourself, as you are the one professing a doctrine different from the one that has been handed down to us from the Apostles. All you are doing, is abusing verses and fixating on individual passages to the exclusion of others. You have also demonstrated that when it comes to interpreting Scripture you throw reason out of the window, which is why you come to the conclusions you hold in the first place.
That is right Clete! You have interpreted nothing and are treating the Scriptures like a newspaper! This in spite of the clear warning in the Scriptures that show that they are hard to understand and that many unlearned and unstable men distort them for their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16, Acts 8:30-31).
Even the devil can cite Scripture, so you saying that you post Scripture amounts to nothing. Provide a coherent and rational explanation drawing not just from isolated verses but from the fullness of revelation for your position, otherwise you are just living in fantasy. You read something like "the Word became flesh" in John and then you go around screaming that God, since the Word became flesh, died. You read a quote from the Psalm said by Christ at the cross which begins with "My God why has you forsaken me" and then you take that as to imply that the Son was separated from the Father and you take his descent into Hell as to mean that he was spiritually dead, all this you do without even taking into consideration the context, cross references, preceding and following events, the nature of God, etc. You simply are not thinking at all Clete.
That he forsook God the Son does not means that he was separated from him, only that he gave him up to be crucified and that by his own will, he suffered at the hands of wicked men. If he had willed, he could have asked the Father to send an army of angels to rescue him (Matthew 26:53). The intimate union of the Son and the Father is always present throughout the gospels.
One may not be able to fully understand the nature of something down to the very last detail, and such is the Trinity, which is ultimately a mystery. However, that doesn't means that we cannot exclude error from our understanding of it and also exclude explanations that fall into error or contradiction. Our explanation must be consistent with reality, otherwise we give in to fables. Just reading what Scripture says is not enough for forming an adequate understanding of God. In fact, Scripture is not the first "domino" in the chain of facts that link the God of reality, the one that can in fact exist, to the God described in the Scriptures as a metaphysical necessity. Scripture itself tells us that we see his invisible qualities through the things that are made (Romans 1:20) and so, reason and our knowledge of reality must inform our reading of Scripture, if we are to avoid falling into error. You are failing to do this and are adopting an approach to the Scriptures that employs a simplistic literalism, a selection of specific verses to the exclusion of others and also one that does not employs reason and logic but excludes it.
I have already explained this above, the question is not wether Jesus was still God in every sense (which is a contradiction in itself, for there cannot be two infinite beings), the question is wether God (the Trinity) was still one God. Separation goes against that, it is really not that hard to figure that out. This is not stuff from "my doctrine", these are basic truths of reason, which can be understood and accepted by anyone.
I have already done so above. There is no need to argue against the Trinity, there is the need however to argue against Tritheism (or Ditheism), which is the idea you are advancing.
Nice strawman, where did I said that God is not just or that he could just make sin go away?
Guess what Clete! I did not say that God HAD to do anything to save me or anyone else. Better pay more attention to what you read next time.
You are missing the point. The issue is not wether or not God was required to redeem man in the first place, the issue is that God, omnipotent and merciful and just as he is, could have employed a different means to redeem man and was not limited to a single means. You also ignore the fact that the person doing the forgiving gets to set the conditions so that others gain forgiveness from him. God being totally free and totally wise, could set some condition different than the incarnation. That the incarnation was the most appropriate for man does not means that it was the only one.
From this and from what you say below, it is clear that you are saying one thing in one breath and denying it in the other. Humanity and divinity are both natures, so for you to say that Christ did not have two natures and that he was human and divine is a contradiction. Besides, if he had only a divine nature, then what is all this talk about he being raised from the dead in an incorruptible body? Did he get "more" divine? Was he only "a bit" divine before the resurrection? Was his divine nature corruptible before the resurrection and incorruptible after it? Explain yourself.
Who is saying that it was not the Son of God become flesh? Nobody is denying that. The question is precisely how he became flesh and in what manner the incarnation occurred.
I said fused, Clete, not that they were incompatible. That a thing is compatible with another does not means that it can be turned into the thing it is compatible with nor that it can be fused with it. When you mix red and yellow you get orange, something other than red or yellow, which is neither one nor the other. That is what you get when you mix or fuse the two natures. It is neither fully man, nor fully God, nor both, but something else. You also ignore that for Christ to be like us in every way, and for him to be a man such that St. Paul could draw a parallel between him and Adam (Romans 5:19), and for his Sacrifice to apply to us, he would need to be fully human, and not a "divinized" human, but really and truly human.
What does it means for God to become a human being?
Again, what does that means, Clete? In advance, no it doesn't means precisely what it says, for that is not as clear as you assume it is. Merely saying that God became flesh explains nothing.
Yes, it is one God, three persons. One nature shared by all three persons. If the union took place in the nature, which is common to all three, then it necessarily follows that the three persons, that is, the entire Godhead, was incarnated. This is one of the reasons why the union takes place on the person, and is why it can be said that it was the Second person who became flesh and not the Father or the Holy Ghost.
Yes, he was the God man Jesus Christ, yes he was one person, God the Son, on this much you are correct. But you err when you assert that he only had a divine nature and by what you have been saying in this post, you don't seem to even hold to this consistently.
Yes, God became human being and remained God, as he has always been, in the exact same nature that he had before the incarnation, as you have just said. What do you think that means other than that his nature was not fused with the human nature? If he remained in the exact same nature, then his nature could not become or be mixed with something else (i.e. human) at the incarnation because if that were so, he would not have the exact same nature he had before but a different one.
You are trying to make a distinction between flesh and nature in order to try and preserve that Christ is both human and divine (the very thing I have been saying all along) without conceding two natures in Christ (which as I said above is a contradiction). But this distinction is unfounded, for "flesh" is used across the Scriptures to refer to our humanity and is used by God to distinguish human nature from his own nature, which is spirit (Genesis 6:3, Matthew 16:17).
Parroting Scripture passages without using reason amounts to nothing. I told you above that while we may not fully understand something, we can nonetheless, use our reason to exclude erroneous explanations. That Christ has two natures is a fact found in the Scriptures, as we see both divine (Mark 3:12, John 9:35-38, John 10:36) and human (Matthew 1:16, Romans 1:3, Luke 22:42, Luke 24:39, 1 Timothy 2:5) qualities attributed to him throughout them and instances where both are attributed to him at the same time (John 20:28). We see that Christ himself does it as well, by making himself equal to God (John 10:30) and also inferior to God (John 14:28). The logical inference from these facts, which on the surface seem to contradict themselves is that Christ has two natures, a human, by which he is from the seed of David, on account of which he was as a faithful Jew (see that he was baptized not because he needed it but only to follow the precepts Matthew 3:15) and a divine, by which is he is the Son of God. There are many more instances on Scripture that reveal the two natures of Christ. All throughout the gospels and the epistles we see the same theme, where Christ attributes to himself things previously attributed only to God in the Old Testament and also where he declares himself a servant of God.
So you acknowledge that there are two natures in Christ? The human and the divine? Bear in mind, that this does not means that Christ is two persons, he is only one, nor does it means that he is less than he would be otherwise, for the infinite value of Christ emerges due to the union in the person. The only thing Christ's humanity lacked was a person, which is not part of human nature per se, and this is what is supplied in God the Son, the second person of the Trinity.
As a side comment, the fact that Christ has two natures is in no way inconsistent with open theism, nor is the indivisibility of the Trinity (and thus the inability of the Father being separated from the Son). You don't need to repudiate open theism and embrace Catholicism in order to accept those truths. This you can see from some of your fellow open theists here at TOL, who have no problem with these things. While I admit that I am not familiar with them, popular open theist advocates such as Sanders, Pinnock, etc, as far as I know, have no problems with these things and neither do the majority Arminians (who are no friends of Calvinism). This is not trying to appeal to a majority or anything, but just something that you perhaps should think about, specially since these two truths are central to the Christian faith.
Evo
