Replacement Theology Quotes

Man is saved if he opens himself to God and to others, even if he is not clearly aware that he is doing so. This is valid for Christians and non-Christians alike -- for all people. . . . We can no longer speak properly of a profane world. A qualitative and intensive approach replaces a quantitative and extensive one.

But there was no question in Jung’s mind that psychology had replaced theology. Indeed, he believed that twentieth-century man had devised a psychology precisely because theology no longer provided any explanation of the world or any comfort for the soul. Jung

Everything we learn—economics, philosophy, biology, mathematics—has to be understood in light of the overarching reality of the character of God. That is why, in the Middle Ages, theology was called “the queen of the sciences” and philosophy “her handmaiden.” Today the queen has been deposed from her throne and, in many cases, driven into exile, and a supplanter now reigns. We have replaced theology with religion.

Evidently, then, a not-so-subtle shift had occurred in the original love motive; compassion and solidarity had been replaced by pity and condescension.

Reformation theology might have removed the priest, but it replaced him with the husband.

We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in marketplace terms: everyone we meet is either a potential recruit to join our enterprise or a potential consumer for what we are selling; or we ourselves are the potential recruits and consumers. Neither we nor our friends have any dignity just as we are, only in terms of how we or they can be used.

Later, when Eve is created, Adam understands—as soon as he lays eyes on her—that men and women are fundamentally alike, yet different in complementary ways. Before she even speaks a word, Eve’s body reveals all this and more.  The body reveals the person. This phrase tells us all there is to know about the body. Science can examine our flesh in minute detail, down to our cells and even our DNA. But no amount of scientific exploration can replace the truth that our bodies reveal us, giving form to our innermost being and unique personality. Our bodies are sacramental—they make the invisible visible.

When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology. A fundamentalist would deny this, since fundamentalism is antihistorical: it believes that Abraham, Moses and the later prophets all experienced their God in exactly the same way as people do today.

The aim, as in all theological and biblical exploration, is not to replace love with knowledge. Rather, it is to keep love focused upon its true object. We

Monotheism generally allows for no greys. Ideas are either true or false. Hence, although science develops out of the alchemy of the medieval Christian milieu (derived from Arabic alchemy, which was stimulated by the much earlier Chinese alchemy), science is not understood by the nonscientific monotheistic population. The general Western public mistakenly thinks science presents unalterable truth, as does their religion, rather than theories to be tested and continually discarded to be replaced by new hypotheses, which is the actual scientific method.

Mission doesn't mean `compelling them to come in'! It is the invitation to God's future and to hope for the new creation of all things: `Behold, I am making all things new' - and you are invited to this divine future for the world! In God's Spirit you can already anticipate now this becoming-new which God will complete on his day. Once a passion for God's future replaces a passion for the spread of the church we shall stop exporting our ugly European and American church divisions, and extending religious denominationalism instead of hope for the kingdom of God.

What we call “the laws of nature” merely reflect the normal way in which God sustains or governs the natural world. Perhaps the most wicked concept that has captured the minds of modern people is the belief that the universe operates by chance. That is the nadir of foolishness. Elsewhere, I have written more extensively on the scientific impossibility of assigning power to chance, because chance is simply a word that describes mathematical possibilities.* Chance is not a thing. It has no power. It cannot do anything, and therefore it cannot influence anything, yet some have taken the word chance, which has no power, and diabolically used it as a replacement for the concept of God. But the truth, as the Bible makes clear, is that nothing happens by chance and that all things are under the sovereign government of God, which is exceedingly comforting to the Christian who understands it.

Revelation is purposive. Its end is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. In short: revelation is reconciliation.

So what was the Synagogue of Satan? You might be surprised to find out there are two types of the Synagogue of Satan. They are the ones that “say they are Jews but are not.” The Synagogue of Satan always tries to say that the church has replaced Israel. This was done in two ways.   Judaizing Christians – Legalism/Ebionites The Judaizers said that since the church has replaced Israel, the church has to observe the Mosaic Law. We call this “legalism” or “Judaising.” This type insisted that believers must be circumcised, not eat pork, and keep the Sabbath. Paul, in Titus 1:10-11, stated that people who teach this kind of theology “must be silenced!” These are the ones that forced the formation of the first Jerusalem Council, recorded in Acts 15, to create a decree that the Mosaic Law has nothing to do with salvation.   Replacement Theology By the third century the Jewish form of legalism had long vanished. All that was left was Replacement Theology.

In principle, to be sure, the Reformation idea of the universal priesthood of all believers meant that not only the clergy but also the laity, not only the theologian but also the magistrate, had the capacity to read, understand, and apply the teachings of the Bible. Yet one of the contributions of the sacred philology of the biblical humanists to the Reformation was an insistence that, in practice, often contradicted the notion of the universal priesthood: the Bible had to be understood on the basis of the authentic original text, written in Hebrew and Greek which, most of the time, only clergy and theologians could comprehend properly. Thus the scholarly authority of the Reformation clergy replaced the priestly authority of the medieval clergy.

It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of the evolution of theology will be like its beginning—it will cease to have any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of theological symbols. And unless these are converted from symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty which is laid upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have replaced.

Carol and I have found that unless God baptizes us with fresh outpourings of love, we would leave New York City yesterday! We don’t live in this crowded, ill-mannered, violent city because we like it. Whenever I meet or read about a guy who has sexually abused a little girl, I’m tempted in my flesh to throw him out a fifth-story window. This isn’t an easy place for love to flourish. But Christ died for that man. What could ever change him? What could ever replace the lust and violence in his heart? He isn’t likely to read the theological commentaries on my bookshelves. He desperately needs to be surprised by the power of a loving, almighty God. If the Spirit is not keeping my heart in line with my doctrine, something crucial is missing. I can affirm the existence of Jesus Christ all I want, but in order to be effective, he must come alive in my life in a way that even the pedophile, the prostitute, and the pusher can see.

But theological predestination and free will are not necessarily incompatible. If God has a definite power over the whole of existence, one can imagine this power extending to His ability, whenever He wills, to replace any given destiny with another destiny. In other words, destiny is not definite but indefinite, mutable by the deliberate actions of man himself; Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. God has not predetermined the course of human history but rather is aware of all its possible courses and may alter the one we’re on in accordance with our will and the bounds of His universe.

The larger buildings are now rented out and house schools and institutions more secular in mission where the Internet and fax machine replace Scripture and theological discourse as the working paradigm. Perhaps it's a good metaphor for modern society. We're too absorbed in communicating among ourselves to worry about an almighty architect.

When people are kept in abject poverty and illiteracy while others grow rich and “develop their personalities” at the former’s expense we speak of oppression; when structures and persons that perpetuate powerlessness are replaced by structures that allow people to stand on their own feet and have their own voice, we speak of liberation.2 Both

When we approach theology as facts to look at, it is easy to allow certain theological debates to replace Scripture as our primary theological subject matter. These debates—such as the categorization of God’s attributes, the nature of predestination, the age of the earth, and the continuation of certain spiritual gifts—are not unimportant issues, and sometimes the church must return to them for extended theological reflection. However, the church’s mission is derailed when theology becomes little more than a discipline helping people know what to believe about these particular issues. These debates are necessary to the task of theology, but they are not primary. The primary role of theology is to cultivate in us a love for and knowledge of

The body reveals the person. This phrase tells us all there is to know about the body. Science can examine our flesh in minute detail, down to our cells and even our DNA. But no amount of scientific exploration can replace the truth that our bodies reveal us, giving form to our innermost being and unique personality. Our bodies are sacramental—they make the invisible visible.

The resurrection of the body - what do we really mean by this? ...Did not the mystics and sages of all times teach us that the positive meaning of death is precisely that it liberates us from the prison of the body, as they say, from this perennial dependency on the material, physical, and bodily life - finally rendering our souls light, weightless, free, spiritual? We [must] consider more profoundly the meaning of the body... We must consider the role of the body in our, in my, life. On the one hand, of course it is entirely clear that all of our bodies are transitory and impermanent. Biologists have calculated that all the cells that compose our bodies are replaced every seven years. Thus, physiologically, every seven years we have a new body. Therefore, at the end of my life the body that is laid in the grave or consumed by fire is no longer the same body as all the preceding ones, and in the final analysis each of our bodies is nothing other than our individual [being] in the world, as the form of my dependence on the world, on the one hand, and of my life and of my activity on the other. In essence, my body is my relationship to the world, to others; it is my life as communion and as mutual relationship. Without exception, everything in the body, in the human organism, is created for this relationship, for this communion, for this coming out of oneself. It is not an accident, of course, that love, the highest form of communion, finds its incarnation in the body; the body is that which sees, hears, feels, and thereby leads me out of the isolation of my *I*. But then, perhaps, we can say in response: the body is not the darkness of the soul, but rather the body is its freedom, for the body is the soul as love, the soul as communion, the soul as life, the soul as movement. And this is why, when the soul loses the body, when it is separated from the body, it loses life.

You have a poem called “Bad Theology.” What would you call a bad theology? I guess any theology that presumes to have God in its pocket. Can I explain this without sinning further? We’ll find out. The community in which I was raised did what they would call theology, but it was always a kind of cranky, brutal reduction of lush and beautiful complexities into the lowest common denominator, the dullest version. But when I went away to school and started reading more, I became increasingly dissatisfied with any theology that replaces the enormous, immeasurable real with very measurable and very calculated replacements. I’m not saying this very eloquently, but I guess bad theology articulates as definitive and conclusive that which is unknowable and without end.

This paraphrase not only sounds rationalistic but is meant to be so, for despite every effort the modern mind no longer understands our two-thousand-year-old theological language unless it “accords with reason.” As a result, the danger that lack of understanding will be replaced by lip-service, affectation, and forced belief or else by resignation and indifference has long since come to pass.

Jesus and his first followers, as Second Temple Jews, believed as well in an eschatology of new creation. This did not involve the abolition of the present world and its replacement with a totally different on. Nor did it imply the steady evolution-from-within of the Stoics, let alone the escapist 'eschatology' of the heading-for-heaven Platonists. They believed in the redemptive transformation of the present world into a new one.

The problem is most people don’t really think prayer makes a difference in how God acts. The majority of us are fatalistic when it comes to prayer. Lots of people honestly believe that what’s going to happen is going to happen, with or without prayer. That kind of a twisted, lazy theology is what sucks the life out of people’s prayers.[13] Are you saying my prayers really make a difference in what God does or does not do? Yes. Do not miss that. Many Jesus followers do. What I’m saying is really important. Prayer changes reality. Prayer moves the hand of God. Dallas Willard writes: “God’s response to our prayers is not a charade. He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway. Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do. The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best…of course this is not the biblical idea of prayer, nor is it the idea of people for whom prayer is a vital part of life.”[14] When you pray, things happen. And the reverse is also true. When you don’t pray, things don’t happen. It is written, “You have not because you ask not.” Do you know what that really means? You have not because you ask not![15] What a novel idea. I repeat: Prayer changes reality. Prayer moves the hand of God.

The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its “flamboyant” style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is “intellectual” and not “dramatic”, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is “everywhere center”, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it “decentralizes” and “universalizes” to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any “personalist” mysticism. To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam—in art as in theology—as a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an “association” (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against “centralizing” images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a “Christic uniqueness” and is “decentralized” by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam—or the Koran—which is similarly integrated in a universal “fabric” and a cosmic “rhythm”, having been preceded by other religions—or other “Books”—which it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points. If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere.

As we stated, after their initial conquest, the Milesians began assimilating the gnosis of their predecessors. Of course they were no lovers of the Druids. After all, the British Druids were collaborators with their dire enemies, the Amenists. Nevertheless, returning to the ancient homeland was a most important step for the displaced and despised Atonists. Owning and controlling the wellspring of knowledge proved to be exceptionally politically fortunate for them. It was a key move on the grand geopolitical chessboard, so to speak. From their new seats in the garden paradise of Britain they could set about conquering the rest of the world. Their designs for a “New World Order,” to replace one lost, commenced from the Western Isles that had unfortunately fallen into their undeserving hands. But why all this exertion, one might rightly ask? Well, a close study of the Culdees and the Cistercians provides the answer. Indeed, a close study of history reveals that, despite appearances to the contrary, religion is less of a concern to despotic men or regimes than politics and economics. Religion is often instrumental to those secretly attempting to attain material power. This is especially true in the case of the Milesian-Atonists. The chieftains of the Sun Cult did not conceive of Christianity for its own sake or because they were intent on saving the world. They wanted to conquer the world not save it. In short, Atonist Christianity was devised so the Milesian nobility could have unrestricted access to the many rich mines of minerals and ore existing throughout the British Isles. It is no accident the great seats of early British Christianity - the many famous churches, chapels, cathedrals and monasteries, as well as forts, castles and private estates - happen to be situated in close proximity to rich underground mines. Of course the Milesian nobility were not going to have access to these precious territories as a matter of course. After all, these sites were often located beside groves and earthworks considered sacred by natives not as irreverent or apathetic as their unfortunate descendants. The Atonists realized that their materialist objectives could be achieved if they manufactured a religion that appeared to be a satisfactory carry on of Druidism. If they could devise a theology which assimilated enough Druidic elements, then perhaps the people would permit the erection of new religious sites over those which stood in ruins. And so the Order of the Culdees was born. So, Christianity was born. In the early days the religion was actually known as Culdeanism or Jessaeanism. Early Christians were known as Culdeans, Therapeuts or suggestively as Galileans. Although they would later spread throughout Europe and the Middle East, their birthplace was Britain.

Reading the recipe of your grandma’s chicken soup will never compare to the taste. Seeing a magnificent sunset will never compare to somebody else’s description of that same sunset. Feeling the electrifying sensation of a passionate kiss will never compare to a second-hand account. Nothing replaces experience. If experience is at the heart of every religion, then theology points the way, practice gives us the vehicle, but we must take the steps if we want to personally explore our faith and reap experiences rather than rely solely on second-hand accounts.

Christ, according to the apostle, is not only the “second Man,” He is also “the last Adam”—ho eschatos Adam, “the final Adam,” the Adam by whom the world’s last age comes to be. This eschatology pertains to the Incarnation, of which Paul had written earlier, “when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, become (genomenon) from a woman” (Gal. 4:4). The “fullness of time” is the world’s last age. Although all of biblical history was a period of preparation for the Son’s assumption of our flesh, that assumption radically altered the direction and destiny of history. Adam was replaced.

When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology. A fundamentalist would deny this, since fundamentalism is antihistorical: it believes that Abraham, Moses and the later prophets all experienced their God in exactly the same way as people do today. Yet if we look at our three religions, it becomes clear that there is no objective view of “God”: each generation has to create the image of God that works for it. The same is true of atheism. The statement “I do not believe in God” has meant something slightly different at each period of history. The

The tearing of the Temple’s veil is a fitting end to the passion narratives, the perfect symbol of what the death of Jesus meant for the men and women who reflected upon it many decades later. Jesus’s sacrifice, they argued, removed the barrier between humanity and God. The veil that separated the divine presence from the rest of the world had been torn away. Through Jesus’s death, everyone could now access God’s spirit, without ritual or priestly mediation. The high priest’s high-priced prerogative, the very Temple itself, was suddenly made irrelevant. The body of Christ had replaced the Temple rituals, just as the words of Jesus had supplanted the Torah. Of course, these are theological

Alcohol doesn't console," she wrote. "All it replaces is the lack of God." It does not necessarily follow, however, that if and when a substance vacates the spot (renunciation), God rushes in to fill it. For some, the emptiness itself is God; for others, the space must stay empty. "Lots of space, nothing holy": one Zen master's definition of enlightenment. For Emerson, dreams and drunkenness were but the "semblance and counterfeit" of an "oracular genius." Therein lies their danger: they mimic-- often quite well-- the "flames and generosities of the heart." I suppose he is advocating, in his "sermon", which steadily displace the God of theology with one of Nature, what we might now term "a natural high.

to human nature as it was created. So some time after the creation, there must have been a fall. Confirmation for this view was sought in the Scriptures, and some found it in the story of the lustful angels that sexually assaulted mortal women in Genesis 6:1-4. But this interpretation of the origin of sin was largely replaced by finding the fall in the story of Adam and Eve. According to Williams, the fact that there were two different explanations of the fall in ancient Israel is a confirmation that neither story is the real source or basis of the doctrine ofa fall. Moreover, the interpretation of the two accounts as stories of a fall belongs to popular Jewish religious thought, rather than to the official teachers. According to Williams, the stories are the clothing for the previous

Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy—Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human—are deeply embedded not just in Christian history but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous viruses often lie hidden, malware that must be identified and purged from our software if we want our future to be different from our past. We are realizing that our ancestors didn’t merely misinterpret a few Scriptures in their day; rather, they consistently practiced a dangerous form of interpretation that deserves to be discredited, rejected, and replaced by a morally wiser form of interpretation today. (We

The link established by Christian theology between oikonomia and history is crucial to an understanding of Western philosophy of history. In particular, it is possible to say that the concept of history in German idealism, from Hegel to Schelling and even up to Feuerbach, is nothing besides an attempt to think the “economic” link between the process of divine revelation and history (adopting Schelling’s terms, which we have quoted earlier, the “co-belonging” of theology and oikonomia). It is curious that when the Hegelian Left breaks with this theological concept, it can do so only on condition that the economy in a modern sense, which is to say, the historical self-production of man, is placed at the center of the historical process. In this sense, the Hegelian Left replaces divine economy with a purely human economy.

In sixteenth-century Geneva, Protestant theologian John Calvin spun a complex theological web around two simple threads: the absolute sovereignty of God and the total depravity of human beings. Like Calvinists, Muslims go to great lengths not to confuse Creator and created. Glorifying in the servility of human beings before Allah, they refer to themselves in many cases as "slaves" of the Almighty. But unlike Calvin, Muslims do not believe in original sin. Every human being is born with an inclination toward both God and the good. So sin is not the problem Islam addresses. Neither is there any need for salvation from sin. In Islam, the problem is self-sufficiency, the hubris of acting as if you can get along without God, who alone is self-sufficient. "The idol of yourself," writes the Sufi mystic Rumi, "is the mother of (all) idols." Replace this idol with submission to Allah, and what you have is the goal of Islam: a "soul at peace" (89:27) in this life and the next: Paradise.

The state does not take a merely temporal regulatory role and leave salvation in the hands of the church; rather, the modern state seeks to replace the church by itself becoming a soteriological institution.16 It is in this sense, then, that the modern state is a parody of the church: “The body of the state is a simulacrum, a false copy, of the Body of Christ” (RONT, 182). As a result, while political rhetoric may suggest that the state is confined to a “public” sphere or that the reign of the secular is circumscribed, in fact the modern state demands complete allegiance, and the reign of the secular does not tolerate territories of resistance.17 The state is happy to absorb all kinds of private pursuits under the umbrella of civil society, but it cannot tolerate a religious community that claims to be the only authentic polis and proclaims a king who is a rival to both Caesar and Leviathan. In such a case, this community’s allegiance to its king ultimately trumps its allegiance to the state or empire, and its understanding of the nature of human persons does not fit the normative picture of liberalism. This the state cannot tolerate. It is in this sense that “every worship service is a challenge to Caesar.

Too often scholars have thought and even suggested that what happened during and after Constantine was that the church sought to replace the pagan temples, priests, and sacrifices with their own. This is at best a half truth. If this had been primarily what was going on, we would have expected to find priestesses showing up in the mainstream church in and after the time of Constantine, since there were certainly priestesses in the pagan temples. But this we do not find in the historical record. This is because the church of that period was not merely trying to supplant pagan religion with Christian religion, though some of that was going on. More to the point, there was a rising tide of anti-Judaism, and one of its manifestations was this Old Testament hermeneutic. The Torah had been claimed as the church’s book, Jews were being ostracized and then later ghettoized, and a hermeneutic of ministry was being adopted which co-opted the Old Testament for church use when it came to priests, temples, and sacrifices, and indeed sacraments in general. Thus ironically enough while the structure of the ecclesial church was becoming more Old Testamental, the church hierarchy was not only becoming less tolerant of Jews, it was forgetting altogether the Jewish character of Jesus’ ministry and his modifications of the Passover that led to the Lord’s Supper celebration of the early church in the first place.

The most consistent execution of this project is to be found in the Letter to the Hebrews, which connects the death of Jesus on the Cross with the ritual and theology of the Jewish feast of reconciliation and expounds it as the true cosmic reconciliation feast. The train of thought in the letter could be briefly summarized more or less as follows: All the sacrificial activity of mankind, all attempts to conciliate God by cult and ritual—and the world is full of them—were bound to remain useless human work, because God does not seek bulls and goats or whatever may be ritually offered to him. One can sacrifice whole hecatombs of animals to God all over the world; he does not need them, because they all belong to him anyway, and nothing is given to the Lord of All when such things are burned in his honor. “I will accept no bull from your house, nor he-goat from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. . . .” So runs a saying of God in the Old Testament (Ps 50 [49]:9-14). The author of the Letter to the Hebrews places himself in the spiritual line of this and similar texts. With still more conclusive emphasis he stresses the fruitlessness of ritual effort. God does not seek bulls and goats but man; man’s unqualified Yes to God could alone form true worship. Everything belongs to God, but to man is lent the freedom to say Yes or No, the freedom to love or to reject; love’s free Yes is the only thing for which God must wait—the only worship or “sacrifice” that can have any meaning. But the Yes to God, in which man gives himself back to God, cannot be replaced or represented by the blood of bulls and goats. “For what can a man give in return for his life”, it says at one point in the Gospel (Mk 8:37). The answer can only be: There is nothing with which he could compensate for himself. But

I have come to believe that our culture’s popular understanding of these difficult doctrines is often a caricature of what the Bible actually teaches and what mature Christian theology has historically proclaimed. To Laugh At, To Live By What do I mean by a caricature? A caricature is a cartoonlike drawing of a real person, place, or thing. You’ve probably seen them at street fairs, drawings of popular figures like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Caricatures exaggerate some features, distort some features, and oversimplify some features. The result is a humorous cartoon. In one sense, a caricature bears a striking resemblance to the real thing. That picture really does look like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Features unique to the real person are included and even emphasized, so you can tell it’s a cartoon of that person and not someone else. But in another sense, the caricature looks nothing like the real thing. Salient features have been distorted, oversimplified, or blown way out of proportion. President Obama’s ears are way too big. Aunt Cindy’s grin is way too wide. And Marilyn Monroe . . . well, you get the picture. A caricature would never pass for a photograph. If you were to take your driver’s license, remove the photo, and replace it with a caricature, the police officer pulling you over would either laugh . . . or arrest you. Placed next to a photograph, a caricature looks like a humorous, or even hideous, distortion of the real thing. Similarly, our popular caricatures of these tough doctrines do include features of the original. One doesn’t have to look too far in the biblical story to find that hell has flames, holy war has fighting, and judgment brings us face-to-face with God. But in the caricatures, these features are severely exaggerated, distorted, and oversimplified, resulting in a not-so-humorous cartoon that looks nothing like the original. All we have to do is start asking questions: Where do the flames come from, and what are they doing? Who is doing the fighting, and how are they winning? Why does God judge the world, and what basis does he use for judgment? Questions like these help us quickly realize that our popular caricatures of tough biblical doctrines are like cartoons: good for us to laugh at, but not to live by. But the caricature does help us with something important: it draws our attention to parts of God’s story where our understanding is off. If the caricature makes God look like a sadistic torturer, a coldhearted judge, or a greedy génocidaire, it probably means there are details we need to take a closer look at. The caricatures can alert us to parts of the picture where our vision is distorted.

The heart is the center of the human microcosm, at once the center of the physical body, the vital energies, the emotions, and the soul, as well as the meeting place between the human and the celestial realms where the spirit resides. How remarkable is this reality of the heart, that mysterious center which from the point of view of our earthly existence seems so small, and yet as the Prophet has said it is the Throne (al-‘arsh) of God the All-Merciful (ar-Rahmân), the Throne that encompasses the whole universe. Or as he uttered in another saying, “My Heaven containeth Me not, nor My Earth, but the heart of My faithful servant doth contain Me.” It is the heart, the realm of interiority, to which Christ referred when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21), and it is the heart which the founders of all religions and the sacred scriptures advise man to keep pure as a condition for his salvation and deliverance. We need only recall the words of the Gospel, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8) […] In Christianity the Desert Fathers articulated the spiritual, mystical, and symbolic meanings of the reality of the heart, and these teachings led to a long tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church known as Hesychasm, culminating with St Gregory Palamas, which is focused on the “prayer of the heart” and which includes the exposition of the significance of the heart and the elaboration of the mysticism and theology of the heart. In Catholicism another development took place, in which the heart of the faithful became in a sense replaced by the heart of Christ, and a new spirituality developed on the basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Reference to His bleeding heart became common in the writings of such figures as St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Catherine of Sienna. The Christian doctrines of the heart, based as they are on the Bible, present certain universal theses to be seen also in Judaism, the most important of which is the association of the heart with the inner soul of man and the center of the human state. In Jewish mysticism the spirituality of the heart was further developed, and some Jewish mystics emphasized the idea of the “broken or contrite heart” (levnichbar) and wrote that to reach the Divine Majesty one had to “tear one’s heart” and that the “broken heart” mentioned in the Psalms sufficed. To make clear the universality of the spiritual significance of the heart across religious boundaries, while also emphasizing the development of the “theology of the heart” and methods of “prayer of the heart” particular to each tradition, one may recall that the name of Horus, the Egyptian god, meant the “heart of the world”. In Sanskrit the term for heart, hridaya, means also the center of the world, since, by virtue of the analogy between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the center of man is also the center of the universe. Furthermore, in Sanskrit the term shraddha, meaning faith, also signifies knowledge of the heart, and the same is true in Arabic, where the word îmân means faith when used for man and knowledge when used for God, as in the Divine Name al-Mu’min. As for the Far Eastern tradition, in Chinese the term xin means both heart and mind or consciousness. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Chapter 3: The Heart of the Faithful is the Throne of the All-Merciful)

The heart is the center of the human microcosm, at once the center of the physical body, the vital energies, the emotions, and the soul, as well as the meeting place between the human and the celestial realms where the spirit resides. How remarkable is this reality of the heart, that mysterious center which from the point of view of our earthly existence seems so small, and yet as the Prophet has said it is the Throne (al-‘arsh) of God the All-Merciful (ar-Rahmân), the Throne that encompasses the whole universe. Or as he uttered in another saying, “My Heaven containeth Me not, nor My Earth, but the heart of My faithful servant doth contain Me.” It is the heart, the realm of interiority, to which Christ referred when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21), and it is the heart which the founders of all religions and the sacred scriptures advise man to keep pure as a condition for his salvation and deliverance. We need only recall the words of the Gospel, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8) […] In Christianity the Desert Fathers articulated the spiritual, mystical, and symbolic meanings of the reality of the heart, and these teachings led to a long tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church known as Hesychasm, culminating with St Gregory Palamas, which is focused on the “prayer of the heart” and which includes the exposition of the significance of the heart and the elaboration of the mysticism and theology of the heart. In Catholicism another development took place, in which the heart of the faithful became in a sense replaced by the heart of Christ, and a new spirituality developed on the basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Reference to His bleeding heart became common in the writings of such figures as St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Catherine of Sienna. The Christian doctrines of the heart, based as they are on the Bible, present certain universal theses to be seen also in Judaism, the most important of which is the association of the heart with the inner soul of man and the center of the human state. In Jewish mysticism the spirituality of the heart was further developed, and some Jewish mystics emphasized the idea of the “broken or contrite heart” (levnichbar) and wrote that to reach the Divine Majesty one had to “tear one’s heart” and that the “broken heart” mentioned in the Psalms sufficed. To make clear the universality of the spiritual significance of the heart across religious boundaries, while also emphasizing the development of the “theology of the heart” and methods of “prayer of the heart” particular to each tradition, one may recall that the name of Horus, the Egyptian god, meant the “heart of the world”. In Sanskrit the term for heart, hridaya, means also the center of the world, since, by virtue of the analogy between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the center of man is also the center of the universe. Furthermore, in Sanskrit the term shraddha, meaning faith, also signifies knowledge of the heart, and the same is true in Arabic, where the word îmân means faith when used for man and knowledge when used for God, as in the Divine Name al-Mu’min. As for the Far Eastern tradition, in Chinese the term xin means both heart and mind or consciousness. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Chapter 3: The Heart of the Faithful is the Throne of the All-Merciful)

When revealed theology is reduced to an autonomous study of man, when biblical authority is replaced by an unstable human wisdom, when behavior is directed by the descriptions of social science instead of the prescriptions of God’s Word, then we have returned to the situation prevailing at the time of the Book of Judges: every man will do what is right in his own eyes.

In the twenty-first century, we do not trust ‘mere’ words. They are the weapons of manipulation, the tools of spin used to coerce us. We have better things to do than pick over words. We are tolerant. The spirit of the Reformation that replaced the altar with the pulpit as the focal point of each church has long gone. A pulpit? The very thought strikes us as authoritarian and manipulative. How Erasmus has conquered! As we saw in chapter 4, it was he who said, ‘The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible.’ Simply put, we do not like theological precision, for it causes division over issues that, we feel instinctively, are not the most relevant.

Sardis – Dead Ritual Sardis means “those escaped.” This period of church history dates from the Protestant Reformation, AD 1517, to the time when the great revivals / Great Awakenings started, about AD 1750.   The Reformation churches did well to remove idols, prayer to saints and angels, and transubstantiation. They even did away with “tradition is equal with Scripture.” They coined the phrase “Sola Scriptura,” meaning “by scripture alone,” with no added tradition. But they did not go far enough. They replaced transubstantiation with consubstantiation and kept the false doctrines of amillennialism, cessationism, and replacement theology.   The Sardis church would “soil their garments” by adding Augustinian Calvinism to their doctrine. Calvinism would teach true Christians are chosen by God and are destined to heaven and no one, including the pope, could reverse that. So the threats of the pope could safely be ignored. The Sardis church, now fully believing that doctrine, would have no fear of Rome taking away their salvation. Even though we should not fear Rome sending us to hell, Augustinian Calvinism was considered a Valentian Gnostic heresy by the ancient church fathers. See the Gnostic list above for details.

AD 1750 Philadelphia – Missionary Church Laodicea Denies    Pre-millennialism    Gifts of the Spirit    Inspiration of Scripture    Israel’s right to exist   Allows    Idols    Calvinism    Abortion    Euthanasia    Multiple Interpretations    of Scripture This is the period of Missionary activity, AD 1750 to AD 1948. Notice this period overlaps with Laodicea. Jesus said nothing bad about this church. The Philadelphian Church restored the remaining doctrines forgotten by Sardis. They recognized pre-millennialism and that the gifts still function. They rejected Calvinism in favor of true missionary activity. This period saw the reestablishment of the nation of Israel. Anyone who thought the church had replaced Israel completely, once seeing the restoration in AD 1948 would leave the Synagogue of Satan, also called replacement theology, and come and bow at the feet of this church. The Lord promised that this church would be kept from the hour of (Jacob’s) Trouble.

Religion is the acceptance of alternative beliefs, and it attempts to alter our mindset by replacing reason with faith, morals for doctrinal teachings, logical mentality with coercive dogma, and independence for reliance.

Also called Jacob, or Ephraim, or Joseph, these descendants of the 10 northern tribes disappeared into the nations even though, genetically, they were descendants of Jacob and were cut off from the Covenant, but not forever.  Israel (Ephraim) will come back to life again as a people and will be united with Judah, the Jews, as per the prophecy given by the prophet Ezekiel[25]  Note:  there is no scriptural justification for the belief that Christianity constitutes Ephraim, which is a common form of replacement as well as predestination theology, the belief that those who are Christians are automatically descended from the exiled and lost tribes of Israel.  This would stand in the face of the fact that at Mt Sinai, many joined themselves to Israel who were not descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Paul tells us: “because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:4 – 5). The gospel they believed and received wasn’t just a theological construct or a churchy platitude. Sure, it came through spoken and written words, and it was preached, taught, and shared. But it also came in power. Often Christians are either “word” people or “power” people. On the one hand, we may lean toward a rationalized Christianity. This type of Christianity holds to the gospel Word without gospel power. It preaches, teaches, catechizes, studies, memorizes, and shares the word but with little effect. It possesses “wise and persuasive words” but not “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4). This kind of Christianity can master systematic, biblical, and historical theology without being mastered by Christ. It can identify idols but remains powerless to address their power. Why? Because it replaces the power of the Spirit with the power of knowledge. On the other hand, there is an equal danger in spiritualized Christianity. Such Christianity prays, sings, shouts, and claims victory over a lost world without lifting a finger to share God’s gospel. It is not enough to pray for power; we must proclaim God’s Word. The power of the Spirit works through the proclaimed Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. My pastor during college, Tom Nelson, always said: “Don’t just stand on a shovel and pray for a hole.” Spiritualized Christianity tends to stand and pray, emphasizing private or emotional experiences with God. What we need is prayer and proclamation, power and Word. The Thessalonians had word and power, they grew in understanding and experience, but they also had full conviction. It is not enough to have spiritual power and good theology. These must also be coupled with faith, an active embrace of God’s promises in Christ, which brings about conviction. Full conviction comes when we are set free from false forms of security and experience Spirit-empowered faith in the word of Christ. It springs from genuine encounter with Christ. Full conviction transcends intellectual doubt and emotional experiences, and in the silence of persecution it says: “Christ is enough.” True security, deep security, comes through the reasonable, powerful, Christ-centered conviction that Jesus is enough, not only for us but for the world. When we falter, the church is present to exhort, encourage, and pray for one another to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts. May we toss out the penny stocks of the fear of man to invest deeply in the limitless riches of Christ.

What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin. One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit. (28 January 1956)

The aim, as in all theological and biblical exploration, is not to replace love with knowledge. Rather, it is to keep love focused upon its true object.

To be sure, Judas Iscariot was not exactly the sort of character that Christian Mjomba - or anyone else at St. Augustine’s Seminary for that matter - would have wanted to be nicknamed after. But the fact was that Mjomba had never made a secret of his views on the world. Everyone in the seminary brotherhood knew his stand on apartheid and things like that; and they were considered very liberal. In the conservative environment that prevailed at St. Augustine’s Seminary, they were also tantamount to betrayal! It was about the most unsavory that anyone could have wished to be associated with. But that was the label he had got stuck with. Everybody knew, besides, that it wasn’t some uninformed gentile or misguided unbeliever who had betrayed the Deliverer and handed Him to His killers. And Judas Iscariot wasn’t just anybody either. Judas was one of the twelve who had been handpicked by the Deliverer to form the core of the convocation that would become the Sancta Ecclesia. In addition to being the Deliverer’s purse bearer, Judas Iscariot also drank wine from the same cup as his Master! The man who would betray the Deliverer with a kiss was a member of the inner circle of the burgeoning Christ Fellowship; and, before long, his name had become so repulsive even among Romans, it had replaced that of Brutus, the friend of Cæsar who had conspired with others and stabbed the emperor in the back, as a symbol of betrayal. A traitor par excellence! Whenever Mjomba thought about Judas’ betrayal of the Messiah of the world with a kiss, it was not the act of betrayal itself that came to mind. It was not even the chilling words “Would’st thou betray thy Master with a kiss, Judas?” that were addressed to the betrayer by the Deliverer in the moment when Judas, no doubt representing all humanity, embraced the Nazarene and kissed him on the cheek so the temple’s constabulary wouldn’t grab and take into custody the wrong person! It was the Deliverer’s address to Peter a little earlier on in the Upper House as the fisherman, who himself would swear that he did not know the Nazarene, not once but three times, in front of a shivering crowd not long afterward, balked at the notion of the miracle worker and Son of Man could stoop to wash his (the fisherman’s) dirty feet, namely “Not all are clean, Peter!” And that was, in all probability, after Judas’s feet had already been washed by the Nazarene. That, in any event, was the character after whom Christian Mjomba had been nicknamed by his buddies in what he initially regarded as something that was itself an act of betrayal. The traitors! He could not understand how people could be so insensitive about the feelings of others! And even though he had never said it, he had never liked it a bit - until he started work on his theological thesis." - Joseph M. Luguya, Humans: The Untold Story of Adam and Eve and their Descendants

To be sure, Judas Iscariot was not exactly the sort of character that Christian Mjomba - or anyone else at St. Augustine’s Seminary for that matter - would have wanted to be nicknamed after. But the fact was that Mjomba had never made a secret of his views on the world. Everyone in the seminary brotherhood knew his stand on apartheid and things like that; and they were considered very liberal. In the conservative environment that prevailed at St. Augustine’s Seminary, they were also tantamount to betrayal! It was about the most unsavory that anyone could have wished to be associated with. But that was the label he had got stuck with. "Everybody knew, besides, that it wasn’t some uninformed gentile or misguided unbeliever who had betrayed the Deliverer and handed Him to His killers. And Judas Iscariot wasn’t just anybody either. Judas was one of the twelve who had been handpicked by the Deliverer to form the core of the convocation that would become the Sancta Ecclesia. In addition to being the Deliverer’s purse bearer, Judas Iscariot also drank wine from the same cup as his Master! The man who would betray the Deliverer with a kiss was a member of the inner circle of the burgeoning Christ Fellowship; and, before long, his name had become so repulsive even among Romans, it had replaced that of Brutus, the friend of Cæsar who had conspired with others and stabbed the emperor in the back, as a symbol of betrayal. A traitor par excellence! "Whenever Mjomba thought about Judas’ betrayal of the Messiah of the world with a kiss, it was not the act of betrayal itself that came to mind. It was not even the chilling words “Would’st thou betray thy Master with a kiss, Judas?” that were addressed to the betrayer by the Deliverer in the moment when Judas, no doubt representing all humanity, embraced the Nazarene and kissed him on the cheek so the temple’s constabulary wouldn’t grab and take into custody the wrong person! It was the Deliverer’s address to Peter a little earlier on in the Upper House as the fisherman, who himself would swear that he did not know the Nazarene, not once but three times, in front of a shivering crowd not long afterward, balked at the notion that the miracle worker and Son of Man could stoop to wash his (the fisherman’s) dirty feet, namely “Not all are clean, Peter!” And that was, in all probability, after Judas’s feet had already been washed by the Nazarene. "That, in any event, was the character after whom Christian Mjomba had been nicknamed by his buddies in what he initially regarded as something that was itself an act of betrayal. The traitors! He could not understand how people could be so insensitive about the feelings of others! And even though he had never said it, he had never liked it a bit - until he started work on his theological thesis." ― Joseph M. Luguya, Humans: The Untold Story of Adam and Eve and their Descendants

To be sure, Judas Iscariot was not exactly the sort of character that Christian Mjomba - or anyone else at St. Augustine’s Seminary for that matter - would have wanted to be nicknamed after. But the fact was that Mjomba had never made a secret of his views on the world. Everyone in the seminary brotherhood knew his stand on apartheid and things like that; and they were considered very liberal. In the conservative environment that prevailed at St. Augustine’s Seminary, they were also tantamount to betrayal! It was about the most unsavory that anyone could have wished to be associated with. But that was the label he had got stuck with. Everybody knew, besides, that it wasn’t some uninformed gentile or misguided unbeliever who had betrayed the Deliverer and handed Him to His killers. And Judas Iscariot wasn’t just anybody either. Judas was one of the twelve who had been handpicked by the Deliverer to form the core of the convocation that would become the Sancta Ecclesia. In addition to being the Deliverer’s purse bearer, Judas Iscariot also drank wine from the same cup as his Master! The man who would betray the Deliverer with a kiss was a member of the inner circle of the burgeoning Christ Fellowship; and, before long, his name had become so repulsive even among Romans, it had replaced that of Brutus, the friend of Cæsar who had conspired with others and stabbed the emperor in the back, as a symbol of betrayal. A traitor par excellence! Whenever Mjomba thought about Judas’ betrayal of the Messiah of the world with a kiss, it was not the act of betrayal itself that came to mind. It was not even the chilling words “Would’st thou betray thy Master with a kiss, Judas?” that were addressed to the betrayer by the Deliverer in the moment when Judas, no doubt representing all humanity, embraced the Nazarene and kissed him on the cheek so the temple’s constabulary wouldn’t grab and take into custody the wrong person! It was the Deliverer’s address to Peter a little earlier on in the Upper House as the fisherman, who himself would swear that he did not know the Nazarene, not once but three times, in front of a shivering crowd not long afterward, balked at the notion of the miracle worker and Son of Man could stoop to wash his (the fisherman’s) dirty feet, namely “Not all are clean, Peter!” And that was, in all probability, after Judas’s feet had already been washed by the Nazarene. That, in any event, was the character after whom Christian Mjomba had been nicknamed by his buddies in what he initially regarded as something that was itself an act of betrayal. The traitors! He could not understand how people could be so insensitive about the feelings of others! And even though he had never said it, he had never liked it a bit - until he started work on his theological thesis." - Joseph M. Luguya, Humans: The Untold Story of Adam and Eve and their Descendants

To be sure, Judas Iscariot was not exactly the sort of character that Christian Mjomba - or anyone else at St. Augustine’s Seminary for that matter - would have wanted to be nicknamed after. But the fact was that Mjomba had never made a secret of his views on the world. Everyone in the seminary brotherhood knew his stand on apartheid and things like that; and they were considered very liberal. In the conservative environment that prevailed at St. Augustine’s Seminary, they were also tantamount to betrayal! It was about the most unsavory that anyone could have wished to be associated with. But that was the label he had got stuck with. Everybody knew, besides, that it wasn’t some uninformed gentile or misguided unbeliever who had betrayed the Deliverer and handed Him to His killers. And Judas Iscariot wasn’t just anybody either. Judas was one of the twelve who had been handpicked by the Deliverer to form the core of the convocation that would become the Sancta Ecclesia. In addition to being the Deliverer’s purse bearer, Judas Iscariot also drank wine from the same cup as his Master! The man who would betray the Deliverer with a kiss was a member of the inner circle of the burgeoning Christ Fellowship; and, before long, his name had become so repulsive even among Romans, it had replaced that of Brutus, the friend of Cæsar who had conspired with others and stabbed the emperor in the back, as a symbol of betrayal. A traitor par excellence! Whenever Mjomba thought about Judas’ betrayal of the Messiah of the world with a kiss, it was not the act of betrayal itself that came to mind. It was not even the chilling words “Would’st thou betray thy Master with a kiss, Judas?” that were addressed to the betrayer by the Deliverer in the moment when Judas, no doubt representing all humanity, embraced the Nazarene and kissed him on the cheek so the temple’s constabulary wouldn’t grab and take into custody the wrong person! It was the Deliverer’s address to Peter a little earlier on in the Upper House as the fisherman, who himself would swear that he did not know the Nazarene, not once but three times, in front of a shivering crowd not long afterward, balked at the notion of the miracle worker and Son of Man could stoop to wash his (the fisherman’s) dirty feet, namely “Not all are clean, Peter!” And that was, in all probability, after Judas’s feet had already been washed by the Nazarene. That, in any event, was the character after whom Christian Mjomba had been nicknamed by his buddies in what he initially regarded as something that was itself an act of betrayal. The traitors! He could not understand how people could be so insensitive about the feelings of others! And even though he had never said it, he had never liked it a bit - until he started work on his theological thesis." _Joseph M. Luguya, Humans: The Untold Story of Adam and Eve and their Descendants

The Reformers, on the whole, did not deny that the Catholic Church still displayed vestiges of the true church; this becomes evident, for instance, in the fact that they accepted the validity of baptism by Catholic priests. Their concern was the reformation of the church, not its replacement. The Anabaptists, by comparison, pushed aside with consistent logic every other manifestation of Christianity to date; the entire world, including Catholic and Protestant church leaders and rulers, consisted exclusively of pagans (Schäufele 1966:97).

The tangible, material promises made by God to give Israel a Land are not transferred somehow to the Church. The two are distinct; one did not replace the other.

Although it is true that it is a covenant, to confuse this covenant with the Mosaic covenant could set a person on his or her way towards Replacement Theology and miss the purposes that remain for Israel in the Millennial Kingdom. The

Part of the myth of Persian benevolence is the idea of an end to the exile in 539. But all that was ended was Neo-Babylonian hegemony, to be replaced by that of the Persians. (p. 65)

They may have asked for the Holy Spirit to come, but they did not ask for this. This is real grace, untamed grace. It is the grace that replaces our fantasies of power over people with God’s fantasy for desire for people

Current religiosity and ethics, especially those that replace the story of the cross with demands for social reform, have produced many a theology of glory. It still flourishes along with its attendant despair. There is no cure through the law. It will take some dying. So we are already on the way to the cross.

many argue that virtually all the prophecies related to Israel are somehow fulfilled allegorically in the church. (This is known as replacement theology.) A

man is saved if he opens himself to God and to others even if he is not clearly aware that he is doing so. This is valid for Christians and non-Christians alike — for all people. . . . We can no longer speak properly of a profane world. A qualitative and intensive approach replaces a quantitative and extensive one.

In the name of rejecting ecclesiastical authority as "hierarchy" or "tradition" as theological manipulation and bondage, we have instead created a hermeneutic of suspicion and have invested every biblically informed conscience (instead of a pope) to speak ex cathedra. It is a Pyrrhic victory for Free church Protestantism when the net effect of its teaching results in the replacing of the tyranny of the magisterium with the tyranny of individualism.

The League of Nations Covenant (which specifically endorses the Monroe Doctrine) represents the global extension of this hegemony. The US did not join the League, but American economic power underwrote the peace settlement and, eventually, in the Second World War, US military power was brought to bear to bring down the jus publicum Europaeum and replace it with 'international law', liberal internationalism and, incipiently, the notion of humanitarian intervention in support of the liberal, universalist, positions that the new order had set in place. On Schmitt's account, the two world wars were fought to bring this about – and the barbarism of modern warfare is to be explained by the undermining of the limits established in the old European order. In effect, the notion of a Just War has been reborn albeit without much of its theological underpinnings. The humanized warfare of the JPE with its recognition of the notion of a 'just enemy' is replaced by the older notion that the enemy is evil and to be destroyed – in fact, is no longer an 'enemy' within Schmitt's particular usage of the term but a 'foe' who can, and should, be annihilated. Schmitt

Like in the time of Esther, God has a Jewish girl hidden in the palace! She was born a Jew, then adopted and grafted into the commonwealth of Israel. She lived in every foreign land, hid her Jewish identity, took a Gentile name, and followed the celebrations of the nations where she lived. She grew in beauty and majesty, and she’s married to the King. Do you know her name? That’s right—the Church is her name. And now that the plot to destroy all the Jews has been revealed…her uncle, Mordecai (Messianic Jews), is begging her (the Church) to go before the King and intercede for the lives of her relatives. But will she do it? Will she fast and pray? Will she cry out as a watchman on the walls? Or will she remain silent, hoping the curse will somehow disappear, saying, “I am not of those people any longer; they rejected their King and I am married to Him; they brought these troubles on their own heads; why should I stick my neck out for them? If they are God’s chosen people, then He will certainly take care of them!” Listen to the words of Mordecai when Hadassah, Esther, was concerned for her own safety above the salvation of her people. Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this? (Esther 4:12-14) Yes, that’s right, Church! You are God’s hidden plan for the salvation of Israel and the blessing of all the peoples on Earth! Will you fast and pray? Will you go before the King and cry out for your people? Or will you continue to give comfort and aid to Haman, embrace replacement theology (discussed in chapter 8), support BDS, and refuse shelter and supply to the Jews? For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you will have missed the day of your visitation—even the very purpose for which you were brought to the Kingdom. The adversary, the usurper, is seeking to destroy the whole house of Israel again because… a King is coming!

Because Christ is the last Adam and the true Israel, the true and literal seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16), all of God’s promises to Israel (which includes the nations) are fulfilled in Christ and inaugurated in the church. God has not replaced Israel by the church; instead, he has brought Israel’s role to its fulfillment in Christ and to Christ’s people.

Before the Arabic numerals replaced the Roman ones, the hexadecimal system (taken from Chinese) was present in italian which didn't recognize 'Zero' - hence, the present flipflopping from sedici (16) into diciassette (17) instead from 15 to 16. Therefore, Spanish got linguistically reverted back by the Semitic heritage while maintaining the numeric theology of the gentile heritage.

There was actually little talk about Islam from the first generation of leaders in Muslim countries. They had distinguished themselves as anti-imperialist activists: Atatürk, for instance, derived his charisma and authority as a nation-builder from his comprehensive defeat of Allied forces in Turkey. He went on to abolish the Ottoman office of the Caliphate soon after assuming power, pitilessly killing the political hopes of pan-Islamists around the world. He forbade expressions of popular Islam and arrested Sufi dervishes (executing some of them); he replaced Shariah law with Swiss civil law and Italian criminal law. This partisan of Comtean Positivism expressed publicly what many Muslim leaders, confronted with conservative opposition, may have thought privately: that ‘Islam, the absurd theology of an immoral bedouin, is a rotting cadaver that poisons our lives. It is nothing other than a degrading and dead cause.

I rarely read political books, but I can’t stop thinking about Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed. In context, he’s writing about the social crisis of modern America, but honestly, I can’t think of a better one-paragraph biblical theology of the world: In this world, gratitude to the past and obligations to the future are replaced by a nearly universal pursuit of immediate gratification: culture, rather than imparting the wisdom and experience of the past so as to cultivate virtues of self-restraint and civility, becomes synonymous with hedonic titillation, visceral crudeness, and distraction, all oriented toward promoting consumption, appetite, and detachment. As a result, superficially self-maximizing, socially destructive behaviors begin to dominate society.14

The Enneagram teaches a false gospel that focuses on man's own ability to gain self-knowledge and discover his good True Self. The equates to a false gospel in which man himself is the hero in his own salvation story. Any solution that is bereft of a role for the Holy Spirit to point man to his need for the Savior Jesus is a false gospel. The Enneagram is unable to replace the combined truth of the Word and the work of the Holy Spirit to produce true personal change.

The Atonement as the Whole Story If you ask anyone from that 74 percent of Americans who say they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ what the Christian gospel is, you will probably be told that Jesus died to pay for our sins, and that if we will only believe he did this, we will go to heaven when we die. In this way what is only one theory of the “atonement” is made out to be the whole of the essential message of Jesus. To continue with theological language for the moment, justification has taken the place of regeneration, or new life.8 Being let off the divine hook replaces possession of a divine life “from above.” For all of the talk about the “new birth” among conservative Christians, there is an almost total lack of understanding of what that new birth is in practical terms and of how it relates to forgiveness and imputed or transmitted righteousness.

I said “yes” to this journey many years ago and have since discovered that His goodness is beyond my wildest dreams. My yes started by simply recognizing that I have sinned and fallen short of God’s purpose and design. Jesus then became for me the perfect manifestation of goodness. He rescued me from all that would destroy me and brought me into a relationship with Him where more of His goodness could be discovered. Many have taken that first step but tragically have stopped after step one, picking up the view of who God is as seen in the Old Testament stories. Those stories are important and necessary. But the fact is, Jesus came to replace them with a clearer view of what God is like. There are few deceptions more devastating than this one. It is tragic and so completely unnecessary.

earth. It took another five hundred years for the metaphysical dogma of living once and dying once to become definitively established in the Western hemisphere, with the result that all morally important decisions had to be squeezed into a single life. The consequence was that the dramatic fear of hell replaced the epic concern about reincarnation (the fear of hell is, incidentally, a basic factor of what is called “political theology,” but which should more accurately be described as the imperial management of the fear of death).

A sympathetic observer of the state of the French church around the year 1810 or 1815 would have seen nothing but wreckage and, given simple sociological data, would have predicted vocational disaster into the future with everything that implies. What happened was something different. In 1808 there were 12,300 religious sisters in France. In 1878 there were 135,000. In 1830 there were some 3,000 priests of all kinds serving the French Church. In 1878 there were around 30,000, a ten-fold increase in sixty years, and their median age in 1878 was significantly younger than it had been sixty years earlier. Whatever might be said of the Church’s fortunes at that time, it was evident that it wasn’t about to disappear. All of this was a great surprise to the Church’s enemies, especially to those who were developing the discipline of sociology as a kind of replacement for theology and who were happily predicting, under its methodology, the demise of the Church.

To learn Christian theology is to clear out the junk that has accumulated in our minds through years of listening to the world around us, and to replace it with truth. It is to put on the mind of Christ and so sift out the lies in our culture that otherwise would drive us. It is refusing to drift with the assumptions of our society.

Some sky-daddy has replaced theology, when it was about understanding what reality is.

Though we recognize distinct cultural differences across time and place, the commonalities warrant our attention. To think about how these ancient commonalities need to be differentiated from our modern ways of thinking, we can use the metaphor of a cultural river, where the currents represent ideas and conventional ways of thinking. Among the currents in our modern cultural context we would find fundamentals such as rights, privacy, freedom, capitalism, consumerism, democracy, individualism, globalism, social media, market economy, scientific naturalism, an expanding universe, empiricism, and natural laws, just to name a few. As familiar as these are to us, such ways of thinking were unknown in the ancient world. Conversely, the ancient cultural river had among their shared ideas currents that are totally foreign to us. Included in the list we would find fundamental concepts such as community identity, the comprehensive and ubiquitous control of the gods, the role of kingship, divination, the centrality of the temple, the mediatory role of images, and the reality of the spirit world and magic. It is not easy for us to grasp their shape or rationale, and we often find their expression in texts impenetrable. In today’s world people may find that they dislike some of the currents in our cultural river and wish to resist them. Such resistance is not easy, but even when we might occasionally succeed, we are still in the cultural river—even though we may be swimming upstream rather than floating comfortably on the currents. This was also true in the ancient world. When we read the Old Testament, we may find reason to believe that the Israelites were supposed to resist some of the currents in their cultural river. Be that as it may (and the nuances are not always easy to work with), they remain in that ancient cultural river. We dare not allow ourselves to think that just because the Israelites believed themselves to be distinctive among their neighbors that they thought in the terms of our cultural river (including the dimensions of our theology). We need to read the Old Testament in the context of its own cultural river. We cannot afford to read instinctively because that only results in reading the text through our own cultural lenses. No one reads the Bible free of cultural bias, but we seek to replace our cultural lenses with theirs. Sometimes the best we can do is recognize that we have cultural lenses and try to take them off even if we cannot reconstruct ancient lenses. When we consider similarities and differences between the ancient cultural river and our own, we must be alert to the dangers of maintaining an elevated view of our own superiority or sophistication as a contrast to the naïveté or primitiveness of others. Identification of differences should not imply ancient inferiority. Our rationality may not be their rationality, but that does not mean that they were irrational. Their ways of thinking should not be thought of as primitive or prehistorical. We seek to understand their texts and culture, not to make value judgments on them.

Giovanni, in love with her unabashed feminine strength and her reconciliation of love and revolution. I spent nearly every waking moment around Nikki, and I loved her dearly. But sibling relationships are often fraught with petty tortures. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But I had. At the time, I couldn’t understand my mother’s anger. I mean this wasn’t really a woman I was punching. This was Nikki. She could take it. Years would pass before I understood how that blow connected to my mom’s past. My mother came to the United States at the age of three. She was born in Lowe River in the tiny parish of Trelawny, Jamaica, hours away from the tourist traps that line the coast. Its swaths of deep brush and arable land made it great for farming but less appealing for honeymoons and hedonism. Lowe River was quiet, and remote, and it was home for my mother, her older brother Ralph, and my grandparents. My maternal great-grandfather Mas Fred, as he was known, would plant a coconut tree at his home in Mount Horeb, a neighboring area, for each of his kids and grandkids when they were born. My mom always bragged that hers was the tallest and strongest of the bunch. The land that Mas Fred and his wife, Miss Ros, tended had been cared for by our ancestors for generations. And it was home for my mom until her parents earned enough money to bring the family to the States to fulfill my grandfather’s dream of a theology degree from an American university. When my mom first landed in the Bronx, she was just a small child, but she was a survivor and learned quickly. She studied the other kids at school like an anthropologist, trying desperately to fit in. She started with the way she spoke. She diligently listened to the radio from the time she was old enough to turn it on and mimicked what she heard. She’d always pull back enough in her interactions with her classmates to give herself room to quietly observe them, so that when she got home she could practice imitating their accents, their idiosyncrasies, their style. Words like irie became cool. Constable became policeman. Easy-nuh became chill out. The melodic, swooping movement of her Jamaican patois was quickly replaced by the more stable cadences of American English. She jumped into the melting pot with both feet. Joy Thomas entered American University in Washington, D.C., in 1968, a year when she and her adopted homeland were both experiencing

Atheism itself can make no self-sustaining moral claims on human beings. God is not an unnecessary hypothesis, and the replacement of God in the human heart with gods of other sorts - from the state, to the search for subjective authenticity - ends in the worst predations imaginable.

They reclassified Jesus as a supernatural teacher who had looked human, though he was not; the Incarnation and the Atonement they denied, and replaced Christ’s call to a life of holy love with either prescriptions for asceticism or permission for licentiousness. Paul’s letters to Timothy (1 Tim. 1:3-4; 4:1-7; 6:20-21; 2 Tim. 3:1-9); Jude 4, 8-19; 2 Peter 2; and John’s first two letters (1 John 1:5-10; 2:9-11, 18-29; 3:7-10; 4:1-6, 5:1-12; 2 John 7-11) are explicitly opposing beliefs and practices that would later emerge as Gnosticism.

3) Chrislam is an Obvious False Teaching that Has Entered Christianity: Marloes Janson and Birgit Meyer state that Chrislam merges Christianity and Islam. This syncretistic movement rests upon the belief that following Christianity or Islam alone will not guarantee salvation. Chrislamists participate in Christian and Islamic beliefs and practices. During a religious service Tela Tella, the founder of Ifeoluwa, Nigeria’s first Chrislamic movement, proclaimed that “Moses is Jesus and Jesus is Muhammad; peace be upon all of them – we love them all.’” Marloes Janson says he met with a church member who calls himself a Chrislamist. The man said, “You can’t be a Christian without being a Muslim, and you can’t be a Muslim without being a Christian.” These statements reflect the mindset of this community, which mixes Islam with Christianity, and African culture. Samsindeen Saka, a self-proclaimed prophet, also promotes Chrislam. Mr. Saka founded the Oke Tude Temple in Nigeria in 1989. The church's name means the mountain of loosening bondage. His approach adds a charismatic flavor to Chrislam. He says those bound by Satan; are set free through fasting and prayer. Saka says when these followers are set free from evil spirits. Then, the Holy Spirit possesses them. Afterward, they experience miracles of healing and prosperity in all areas of their life. He also claims that combining Christianity and Islam relieves political tension between these groups. This pastor seeks to take dominion of the world in the name of Chrislam (1). Today, Chrislam has spread globally, but with much resistance from the Orthodox (Christians, Muslims, and Jews). Richard Mather of Israeli International News says Chrislamists recognize both the Judeo-Christian “Bible and the Quran as holy texts.” So, they fuse these religions by removing Jewish references from the Bible. Thereby neutralizing the prognostic relevance “of the Jewish people and the land of Israel.” This fusion of Islam with Christianity is a rebranded form of replacement theology (2) (3). Also, traditional Muslims do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, they do not believe Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world. Thus, these religions cannot merge without destroying the foundations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. References: 1. Janson, Marloes, and Birgit Meyer. “Introduction: Towards a Framework for the Study of Christian-Muslim Encounters in Africa.” Africa, Vol. 86, no. 4, 2016, pp. 615-619, 2. Mather, Richard. “What is Chrislam?” Arutz Sheva – Israel International News. Jewish Media Agency, 02 March 2015, 3. Janson, Marloes. Crossing Religious Boundaries: Islam, Christianity, and ‘Yoruba Religion' in Lagos, Nigeria, (The International African Library Book 64). Cambridge University Press. 2021.

Theology becomes therapy…. The biblical interest in righteousness is replaced by a search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, truth by feeling, ethics by feeling good about one’s self. The world shrinks to the range of personal circumstances; the community of faith shrinks to a circle of personal friends. The past recedes. The Church recedes. The world recedes. All that remains is the self.25

Furthermore, Paul reiterates the concept of the Jeremiah passage in Romans 11:1 when he asks, “Did God reject his people? By no means!” Augustine’s teaching was the beginning of what has come to be known as “Replacement Theology” and opened the door to more than fifteen hundred years of Jewish persecution at the hands of so-called Christians.

Using scripture to decode morality, is like using the abacus to code iOS. Likewise, using mere reason to decode life, is like trading in a family for computers. Computers do have a role in family, But computers are not family themselves. Just like scriptures may have a role in life, But scriptures alone ain't life themselves. The coming generations will sure be free, from the stupidity of fundamentalist religiosity. But they'll be the victim of a new stupidity, i.e. intellectual fundamentalism or militant logicality. And trading in one stupidity for another, only gets us stuck in derangement eternal. Just know, love has no proof, love is the proof, And, love has no gospel, love is the gospel. When love is the center of our field of vision, All things civilized attain their rightful place. But when we replace love with either ritual or reason, We end up with everything except peace and wellness.

Take the beliefs of any fundamentalist, and replace all mentions of their particular religion with any other religion, and you won't be able to tell the difference. Why? Because fundamentalism changes only label from one religion to another, but the underlying prejudice, biases and bigotry remain the same. Because underneath every fundamentalism, there is the same old primitive, animal mind trying its darndest to defend the integrity of its personal mental universe.

On the other front, nuanced biblical attacks on American slavery faced rough going precisely because they were nuanced. This position could not simply be read out of any one biblical text; it could not be lifted directly from the page. Rather, it needed patient reflection on the entirety of the Scriptures; it required expert knowledge of the historical circumstances of ancient Near Eastern and Roman slave systems as well as of the actually existing conditions in the slave states; and it demanded that sophisticated interpretative practice replace a commonsensically literal approach to the sacred text. In short, this was an argument of elites requiring that the populace defer to its intellectual betters.

Tolkien was very sensitive about anti-Semitism, so we know he would not have agreed with Justin Martyr’s comment we saw earlier in the book about the early church’s emerging replacement theology. In fact, in Rom 11: 18, Paul warned the gentiles coming into the church not to behave as if they had an advantage over either non-Christian Jews or Jewish members of the church: “Do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.” By Justin Martyr’s time (mid-second century), however, this warning went unheeded, largely due to two Jewish revolts against Rome, increasing tension between the various sects of Judaism, and the rise of a new messiah, Simon bar Kokhba. As we will see, Tolkien offered a corrective for this real historical problem through the relationship between Gimli and Legolas, who are close companions of Aragorn. Indeed, Aragorn’s return brings these two races back together, itself an indication that Aragorn resembles Jesus typologically. By including allusions to Israel’s story in the stories of elves and men in addition to the dwarves, Tolkien may have had Gal 3: 28 in mind where Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Once experience is admitted within the theological edifice, the latter begins to crumble – such portion of it, of course, as stands within the experimental domain, for the other wings are safe from any attack by experience. So years, centuries, go by; peoples, governments, manners and systems of living, pass away; and all along new theologies, new systems of metaphysics, keep replacing the old, and each new one is reputed more “true” or much “better” that its predecessors. And in certain cases they may really be better, if by “better” we means more helpful to society; but more “true”, no, if by the term we mean accord with experimental reality. One faith cannot be more scientific than another, and experimental reality is equally overreached by polytheism, Islamism, and Christianity (whether Catholic, Protestant, Liberal, Modernist, or of any other variety); by the innumerable metaphysical sects, including the Kantian, the Hegelian, the Bergsonian, and not excluding the positivistic sects of Comte, Spencer, and other eminent writers too numerous to mention; by the faiths of solidaristes, humanitarians, anti-clericals, and worshippers of Progress; and by as many other faiths as have existed, exist, or can be imagined.

The doctrine of Holy Communion cannot replace Holy Communion itself. When theology speaks of the Word of God, it is itself under the authority of the Word, even as it itself carries out the act of faith of which it speaks. However, what is carried out in Holy Communion can at best be paraphrased (or circumscribed) but never described. The immortal (ἀθάνατον) and the indestructible (ἀκατάλυτον) is not only the eternal (ἀΐδιον). It is most profoundly also the inexpressible (ἄρρητον).

New Covenant Theology does not teach that the church replaces Israel but that the church is the fulfillment of Israel by virtue of its union with the Jewish Messiah.

If Christian churches had properly taught their members about their faith’s origins and flatly rejected any hint of supersessionism (replacement theology), we would have spared ourselves many problems.

I have argued that the God of the Bible, and especially of the Gospels, can be understood only as God-in-public, and that methods of criticism designed to keep this rumor quiet need to be challenged by appropriate historical, theological, and political critique and replaced by methods that do justice to the reality of the texts and hence do justice - in the much fuller sense - in the public world that the Gospels demand to address.

Exobiology recapitulates eschatology. The eschatological hope of help from heaven revives when the heavens of modern astronomy replace the Heaven of religion. That we can learn from more advanced societies in the skies the secret of survival is the eschatological hope which motivates, or at least is used to justify, the work of exobiologists.”[755]

Paul's doctrine of a new covenant to replace the old 114 conflicts with the very idea of the covenant, and even with the words of Jeremiah.

Heaven will do to earth what the New Law did to the Old: not replacement but consummation (Mt 5:17).

Love is a summary of the moral laws, not a replacement. Therefore, since we are commanded to walk in love, the moral laws are still in full effect.

The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God. In conventional Western theology the attempt is made to know God by thought, to make statements about God. It is assumed that I can know God in my thought. In mysticism, which is the consequent outcome of monotheism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room—and no need—for knowledge about God.