Cynic

You mean like the fact that Calvin was directly responsible for Servetus murder? (Yes Virginia, I WILL post that here, and I WILL call it murder, despite your desire for me not to, as that is relevent to your accusation against me) Never mind that you yourself has so much admitted that that incident took place, and still tried to whitewash his reputation about it. Never mind that I *did* give you a link leading to a site showing Calvin's 'darker side'. ... Or, like Steve said, read your history, and no, church propaganda does NOT qualify. One thing Garth has been doing is miscasting my confrontations of him over unsubstantiated charges and fabrications he has presented as historical facts. None of those confrontations concerned the execution of Servetus, concerning whose death I stated that I figured Calvin did have some responsibility. Garth likely well remembers what purported facts of his I have challenged him to document: 1. Garth involved himself with another poster’s charge that Baptists had tortured heretics, and eventually added to that charge the allegation that Baptists had lynched heretics and Jews. Garth, of course, did not cite a single historical instance of a heretic being tortured or lynched by Baptists. After I provided a link to a website indicating that there seems to be only one known instance in U. S. history of a Jew having been lynched (a man named Leo Frank, who was deemed, correctly or incorrectly, to have raped and murdered a young girl), Garth did not retract his lies and abandon his blood libel. Garth half-switched the discussion to Europe, invoked the persecution of Jews under Ferdinand and Isabella, and muddled the discussion in his typically dishonest manner. 2. Garth put out a charge that Jews had been hunted down for not being Trinitarians. I pressed him to document and elaborate concerning where and by whom Jews were hunted down on any asserted or otherwise apparent basis of their not being Trinitarians. Garth did not respond substantively. In a later thread in which I began rubbing his nose in the careless accusation, Garth responded to another poster’s challenge to produce sources for the accusation by asserting the reason he could not come up with a source for his accusation was because the factualness of his accusation was so well known. 3. Garth also made an allegation that Calvin killed dozens of heretics in Geneva. I challenged him several times to cite sources substantiating that charge. Garth provided, I think, three links. As I recall, two links merely mentioned merely several persons who had been executed in Geneva. One link did contain an allegation that 58 persons were put to death for heresy in Geneva between 1542 and 1546. That allegation was made in the form of a purported quote from Wil Durant. The quote appears in the same form on several Romanist websites engaged in making accusations against the Reformers. Judging from the edition of the Durants' The Story of Civilization in my local library, it seems the part of the quote that characterizes the 58 executions as having been for heresy was bungled or outright cooked. To begin with, however, I will spend no more time on the quote, or on the nature, numbers, subjects and actors involved in Genevan executions in the time of Calvin, though it is concerning these solemn issues that this discussion obviously must turn. [Edited: Changed "between 1542 and 1564" to "between 1542 and 1546."]

Mark, You seem a few drops short of a full quart. Ever hear of the “genetic fallacy”? Look it up.

communicatio idiomatum .

Chatty, I never have been inside a Roman Catholic Church, and I hold Catholics’ Marian religious fetish in utter contempt, but the Christology involved in Mary being referred to as the theotokos (i.e. God-bearer or Mother of God)--at least as it surfaced during the Nestorian controversy--seems sound. Although there is disagreement concerning what Nestorius himself actually believed, Nestorianism was a heresy characterized by a notion that Jesus Christ was two separate (divine and human) persons. The orthodox position is that Jesus Christ is a single divine person within whom the divine and a human nature were forever joined—without any composition of those natures—at his incarnation. According to what I remember of a piece I read a while ago (I wish I could find it and post a link to it), Nestorius might have or might not have held a full blown version of two-persons Nestorianism. Nestorius objected, nonetheless, to Mary being referred to as “theotokos,” and maintained something to the effect that Mary was the mother of the human nature of Christ. If Nestorius did not hold that Jesus Christ was two persons, he nonetheless began speaking of the divine and human natures in Christ as if they were persons or quasi-persons. His chief opponent was Cyril of Alexandria. I think Cyril’s position basically was that what is said of Christ is said of a person rather than of one of two natures in him. It is wrong to say that the human nature of Christ died. It is proper to say that Christ died in his human nature. Jesus Christ is a divine person. He is the eternal Son. He is the eternal Word. At Christ’s incarnation, Mary became the bearer of that divine person, though she contributed towards that incarnating person only his temporally beginning human nature. The theological term involved with the idea that Jesus Christ is referred to personally whether what is said about him concerns his divine or human nature is the communicatio idiomatum (i.e. communication of idioms). It is a sound theological notion. Scripture itself does not separate what is proper to Christ's divine and what is proper to Christ's human nature from Christ himself. It declares that he was crucified, that he died, that he rose from the dead, and it also declares that he is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Sanguinetti, You write like a girlie man.

Garth, I am going to resist, for now, the urge to get appropriately nasty, because I hope to do something more robustly exploratory about Calvin, bloodletting in Geneva and your polemical character.

Steve, I don't think I understand you. By recursion do you mean some sustained generation of categories or terms within a Trinitarian view of God which support such a view of God and allow for its being intelligible? If so, your challenge is bizarre. That a Trinitarian view of God has its own categories and terms that are supportive of and non-contradictory within that view of God only makes obvious that such a view of God is inherently non-contradictory. You would seem merely to be asking me to tie my shoe without tying my shoe.

Garth, I suspect a large problem you have with recognizing Steve has not demonstrated that a Trinitarian view of God is inherently contradictory is your lack of concern for what reality is. What is intellectual integrity when it comes to a chance to run your impertinent mouth? In the past, you have fabricated facts. You have made assertions you could in no way support. You have now pretended that Steve has capably addressed an issue concerning which he has made inconsistent assertions, and has really not much addressed at all. The point I have been pressing is that Socinian Unitarians such as Tzaia who preen about logic while propagandizing against Trinitarians and a Trinitarian view of God cannot form a plausible argument against a Trinitarian view of God on exclusively logical grounds. It would be possible, of course, for an SU to beg the question. He could assert that God exists in accordance with his ontological views, in order to affirm that it is preposterous to hold that God exists other than in accordance with those views. I suspect Steve might have interjected his “1+1+1=...1?” quip as some effort towards defending Tzaia from my challenge to her, but Steve has appeared to maintain both that a Trinitarian view of God is inherently contradictory and that a Trinitarian view of God is false but not inherently contradictory. Note that I have not maintained that the Trinity is demonstrable on exclusively logical grounds. I have asserted the Trinity is necessary on biblical grounds. The contention between orthodox Christians and Socinian Unitarians rises and rests on biblical revelation. As for offering proof, I am Van Tilian enough not to concede that you have any epistemic authority to evaluate what constitutes proof. You presuppose an ultimacy about your own autonomy and epistemological authority, rather than recognize the ultimacy of the sovereign God of Scripture. I can biblically defend the eternal existence and Deity of Christ, show biblically that the Holy Spirit exists alongside the Father and the Son, cite that Scripture emphatically maintains that God is one, affirm that the Father is God to His Son, and argue that a Trinitarian view of God alone allows for these and all things indicated by the testimony of Scripture to be completely true and intelligible. I am not eruditely Van Tilian enough, however, to attempt an argument that one must presuppose the triune God of Scripture as the metaphysically necessary condition for the possibility of proof itself.

Garth, No he did not, unless saying that a Trinitarian view of God is false and extremely un-cool would also qualify as logical demonstration that it is inherently contradictory. Did your rush to say that Steve actually has demonstrated that a Trinitarian view of God is logically contradictory issue from reflexive emotions, or have you really considered, and not to any degree understood, the logical issue here?

Steve, Unicorns, leprechauns, two hundred-foot-tall rabbits and Way Corps virgins are not logically contradictory concepts—however unlikely it is that such entities exist in “objective actuality.” Notions about such existents can be said to be epistemically unwarranted, but such notions are not inherently contradictory. Notions that are inherently contradictory would include those positing square circles or married bachelors. Your waving around the 1+1+1=1 caricature is a mere denial of Trinitarian ontological views. I think it is obvious that you know it. You interjected it, however, in a discussion about an alleged inherent contradictoriness in a Trinitarian view of God. Challenged by my previous post, you did not retract it, but played it again, in a deranged championing of your ontological assumptions and your Platonism/neo-Platonism fetish. Again, the subject in which you interjected your arithmetic quip, and thereby pretended to be addressing, was the alleged inherent contradictoriness of a Trinitarian view of God. Do you really not understand there is a difference between pressing something through your it’s-all-Platonism-and-neo-Platonism processor and your trite-though-incredibly-presumptuous version of the correspondence theory of truth and observing whether something is inherently contradictory or non-contradictory? You can deny ontological views explicating a Trinitarian view of God and assail them as “degenerate superstition.” You have not demonstrated, however--and face it, Pal, you cannot demonstrate--that a Trinitarian view of God is inherently contradictory.

Steve complains, essentially, that the way fourth-century orthodox Christians acknowledged and defended the Deity of Christ involved an ontological perspective that was absent from the thinking of the apostles and from whatever generally goes on in the minds of the Socinian Unitarians here at Grease Spot. While doing that, Steve seems also to have conceded that a plurality-of-persons/singularity-of-substance distinction is logically non-contradictory within certain ontological perspectives. If Steve has conceded that, he also has revealed that he cannot do what he implicitly pretended to do (in his “1+1+1=...1?” post): Demonstrate that a Trinitarian view of God is inherently contradictory. Which is it, Steve? A Trinitarian view of God is inherently contradictory? A Trinitarian view of God is inherently non-contradictory?

Garth, I am going to control my part in the discussion in this thread. I am not going to be controlled by your manipulative rhetoric or by your incontinence. Got that itch to foam and rave against John Calvin? Start another thread. Be informed, however, that I deem your various previous errors, rabid accusations and cheap fabrications fair game.

Steve, I find that numerical characterization surprisingly banal and dimwitted for you. For it to work, a Trinitarian view of God would have to entail holding that God were one and three in the same way. Care to try articulating an argument that it does? The Trinitarian position, as I think you know, is there is one undivided essence of God existing in three persons. There is really no question that that notion does not entail logical invalidity. A charge that a Trinitarian view of God entails contradiction appears generally to be based on ignorance or a disguised denial of the personal/ontological distinction Trinitarians generally believe must exist in God, under biblical warrant.

Garth, If you desire a discussion about John Calvin and the honesty of various blood-laden accusations you have made, start another thread. I am going to try to refrain from distractions while posting to this one.

If so, let's see it.

Tzaia, You have made extravagant assertions about “logic,” “rational thought” and “inherent contradictions.” Are you—or anyone you can call on—capable of demonstrating that a Trinitarian view of God is inherently contradictory?

The first paragraph of the above quote is a strawman characterization of both Trinitarians and the basis of Trinitarian theology. Concerning the second paragraph, I suspect it would be interesting to examine whatever “logic” Tzaia and her polemical Unitarian colleagues might be able to bring forth to attempt some supposed disproving reductio of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity is a biblically necessary doctrine, although it is a biblically unarticulated one. A Trinitarian view of God necessarily follows one’s belief of scriptural indications that: God is one; the Father is God; Jesus Christ existed eternally; Jesus Christ is God; the Father and the Son are individually spoken of under the divine name Jehovah; scriptural pronouns indicate a singularity and a plurality about God; the Holy Spirit has personal identity alongside the Father and the Son; there is a distinction between the Son and the Father; the Father is God to the Son; there is an aspect of inequality between the Son and God the Father; there is an aspect of equality between the Son and God the Father; there is distinction and there is non-distinction between Jesus Christ and God. Scripture indicates such things. In a Trinitarian view of God, one can recognize all these things as fully and simultaneously true. The problem Socinians, Arians, Sabellians, polytheists, henotheists and Unitarians fundamentally have with the Trinity is their own disbelief of some of these things. ***** For a robust piece that touches on supposed logical objections against the Trinity, try: Re: Logic and the Trinity, from the REFORMED list

It’s probably getting about time to put CKnapp back in his cyber-cage.

When one plays the “paranoid” card to insult an opponent, one should anticipate that some response probing their own paranoia will not be deemed off-limits.

I don’t believe in “pair” juice. Littlehawk supposedly produces or buys such stuff from pairs of what?

Following is a quote from an English version of one of Tertullian's works: “Demanding then a law of God, you have that common one prevailing all over the world, engraven on the natural tables to which the apostle too is wont to appeal, as when in respect. of the woman's veil he says, ‘Does not even Nature teach you? ‘ -as when to the Romans, affirming that the heathen do by nature those things which the law requires, he suggests both natural law and a law-revealing nature. Yes, and also in the first chapter of the epistle he authenticates nature, when he asserts that males and females changed among themselves the natural use of the creature into that which is unnatural, by way of penal retribution for their error.” (Source: http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-03/anf03-10.htm#P1056_431766 – see Chapter VI) ***** Tertullian was obviously quite familiar with the subject section of Paul’s epistle to the Romans. ***** John Piper has a few rather competent expository comments (particularly his observation that the teaching of Romans is that homosexuality was a judgment of God) on the subject passage at the following URLs: The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality (Part One) http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/98/101198.html The Other Dark Exchange – Homosexuality (Part Two) http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/98/101898.html The piece that apparently starts Piper's Dark Exchange series is: The First Dark Exchange: Idolatry http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/98/100498.html

Anyone else noticing the makings of an MTV series in this forum's barrel of existential lemons?

This is not about removing infants from life support. This is about actively killing them.

To the patron saint of eccentric posters: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Although it’s tempting to cheer the bugs for going after the likes of P-Mosh, here are links to two Aveeno products that might help. These products are commonly sold in pharmacies. http://www.familymeds.com/yh1/product.asp?sku=38137003658 http://www.drugstore.com/qxp46887_332828_s...ated_lotion.htm ***** Caution: I wouldn’t go smearing either of the products -- particularly the lotion -- all over afflicted parts of my body before testing it on several small areas.