December 11, 2012
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Fundamentalist
At dictionary. com it is defined among other things as strict adherence to the fundamental principles or beliefs. While this can be a negative thing and refer to legalists, usually it is used by the world to define true Christians. It is used by people who do not see the difference between true believers and groups such as the JW who by their own so called christian statement of faith deny the Trinity.
Our problem as Christians if it ever was legalism has swayed greatly to tolerance of wickedness in our churches and in our lives. It is because of our lack of purity that our prayers our hindered and our culture decays. This is not a purity based on works such as in the Law of the sabbath, a shadow of God’s rest for His people, but a purity of love empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Thank God for his faithfulness first to his historical people and then to us as grafted branches.
Comments (3)
You are using the general definition, the religious one is the first one:
“a movement in American Protestantism that arose in the early part of the 20th century in reaction to modernism and that stresses the infallibility of the Bible not only in matters of faith and morals but also as a literal historical record, holding as essential to Christian faith belief in such doctrines as the creation of the world, the virgin birth, physical resurrection, atonement by the sacrificial death of Christ, and the Second Coming.”
As for taking the texts literally and strictly being a good thing:
“Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” (2 corinthians 3:2-6)
“But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.” (Romans 7:6)
@agnophilo - True but this verse has nothing to do with the literal atonenment through death and resurection or of the other specifics you mention. Indeed this book relies on the authority of Jesus raised to life.
@New1E13_15 - What does death and resurrection have to do with what I was talking about? And I reject the idea of moral authority. I think that, for instance, if jesus himself said raping children was good that would not make it good. If however there were a god and that god changed the nature of children so that rape did not harm or traumatize them, that would change the morality. Morality is a byproduct of things like human nature, if there is a god that is the author of human nature then that god is the author of morality. Whether something does harm or not makes it right or wrong, and all the ink and paper in the world doesn’t change that.