The gospel of war?

If we know God told the Israelites to go to war with the “ites” due to their idolatry then I would say since God is “Good News” then that would be a passage where it would be “Good News of War” and also since God ordained them as God’s Nation in the OT would promote a since of Nationalism in the OT. Just some personal thoughts that made me think from your post.

Not trying to debate but give you insight into what people who are not like yourself are thinking and the rationales and substantiations therein.

We can celebrate our differences and still recognize that we are brothers in Christ. :) I hope you feel the same. I already know you do. :)

1) Well Scripture does say that there is a blessing for nations who come to the defense of Israel and the US is the biggest supporter of Israel. So in a lesser sense I believe there is somewhat of a comparison but not a perfect one.

2)While I wouldn’t say the picture represents what Jesus would do, I will say that Jesus never said anything support or against war. He did say love your enemies but when He gave those messages it was given to people. He never addressed nations with regard to war. In fact Christ predicted that there would war and rumoros of war. Also, people don’t realize that Jesus never did away with the Law He fulfilled the Law. Jesus condoned what Israel di in Scripture and it seems to me based on that that Jesus would condone coming to the defense of people who were tortured by Saddam.

3)How it relates to the US is that America was founded as a Christian nation. I believe the more we or any nation supports Israel and stays with the standards this nations was founded on that Christ will help us and bless us. Any nation that does this will be helped. However, this can change and is beginning to change as the people of this nation and other nations condone sinful practices.

“In Genesis 12:3, the Lord says in the covenant He makes with Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” This applies to the nation of Israel as well”

1 Sam 15:1-3, Numbers 21, Exodus 3, Exodus 33, Deuteronomy 20:17, story of Sodom and Gomorrah

1 & 2: Sure, I’ll agree with those arguments as valid stances that Christians can make. I’m not saying that I completely agree, I can honor what you said as possible theologically correct statements.

BUT:

> Also, people don’t realize that
> Jesus never did away with the Law
> He fulfilled the Law.

Wow, there’s one of those generally over assuming offenses that you’re pretty good at slipping in once in a while.

So, are you saying that I don’t realize that? That the reader’s of this blog don’t realize that? Or, Christians in general?

Personally, I’m pretty sure that most believers who attend church on Christmas know that one.

3: Oh, my… Well, that all depends on whom you ask now doesn’t it? I’m not so sure that all of the original settlers/founders of this great nation would back that up (history books behind you or not).

Thanks for the verses. I’ll read the PDF when I get some more time.

Funny, I wonder why a group of Deists would found a Christian nation? Certainly Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, James Monroe, and the U.S. Constitution would take issue with dh’s point #3.

Not all of those founders were Deists. Even those who happened to be Deists still never contradicted the concept that they founded this nation under God. I don’t see any of those founders as contradicting what I have said. I have read much of what they have said and it seems pretty clear to me.

On the Jesus fulfilled the Law part. I wasn’t being condescending. I see many who have a different concept of “fulfill” by quoting the Scripture “We are not under Law but under Grace.” I therefore was clarifying how that Christ actually did not do away with the Law for the concept of Grace but that Grace confirmed the Law and/or the Law confirms Grace by the Law leading to the recognition of our sin (like you and I know) thereby by accepting Christ receive the Grace made available to all but entered into by our Faith choice to accept. That was all I was trying to make as a clarifying statement with regard to “fulfill” the Law as opposed to doing away with the Law in reference to the actions to the ites and the consistency between the OT and NT therein.

dh: Belief in a God of some sort and believing in the Christian conception of God are not the same thing at all. I didn’t say the founding fathers were atheists. I said that the ones I listed weren’t Christians. They were Deists. It’s unfortunate that you can’t simply ignore history to make your points, isn’t it? And There is that pesky first amendment to the constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;. . .” That law was designed to protect the right of people to worship freely, not to establish one religion over the others, as you claim. If you don’t see that as a clear contradiction, there’s probably nothing I can say to convince you.

Justin: Since Christianity predates modern record keeping, I think your claim in incredibly suspect. How many people were killed in the Crusades? Hitler’s antisemitism was as influenced by his Catholic upbringing as it was by his misreading of Darwin and Nietzsche. Stalin and Mao certainly take the lead among modern killers, but there’s nothing in atheism that condones killing. Atheists don’t have a holy book that instructs followers to go forth and kill the infidel. But your final point is right: this is all guilt by association. There are ways to interpret any of these philosophies to good or ill purposes.

dh: If any of the people I mentioned are not deists, please point them out. Since you are so widely read in their works, please quote the passages from their writings or letters where they agree with you that the US was founded as a Christian nation. Until you manage that, I’ll just assume you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Justin’s statement was that comparing the death tolls of those who profess to be Christians (which would clearly include Hitler, who professed to be Catholic) and those who profess to be atheists (which would include Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot) proves nothing! Again, you display your uncanny ability to miss consistently miss the point.

dh: I’m still waiting for your list of quotations from the founding fathers showing that they 1) are not deists and 2) support your claim that the US was founded as a “Christian Nation” (your words).

Tim where did you get the idea that I thought Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao were Christians? I was pointing out that beyond being professed Atheists they were clearly atheists. Hitler professed to be Catholic and/or Christian but my original post clearly states that he wasn’t that in any way.

Also, here is a post that shows that many of the founding fathers were NOT deists. Just because it is in wikipedia doesn’t mean it is correct:

http://members.aol.com/TestOath/deism.ht..

On the Jesus thing. What He said never contradicted what God told the Israelities to do in defnense of the helpless by going to war. Jesus never even discussed war good or bad other than to point out that there would be “wars and rumors of wars”. In fact in Revelation those who come to take on Christ in the Mount of Olives at Armeggedon will be destroyed and this is by Christ.

On the US being blessed. I believe we are receiving the blessing by standing with Israel more than any nation on earth in terms of support and one of the passages I mentioned from Genesis talks about those who stand with Israel will be blessed. Just some additional thoughts.

Also, America is interested in protecting people who are immigrants, legal immigrants. Immigratrion laws convoluted? that is subject to debate.

When one sees how many times America could have been destroyed I can’t help but personally believe this nation was ordained by God: potential fall to the British twice, Civil War, WWII where one battle Normandy and even Japan at its peak could have lead to the US total demise, Cold War whre without the big stick the USSR would have destroyed us, etc.

Based on this and other posts by myself and Justin I still don’t believe the comparisons, that Finite and the support therein by Wheat, that Christianity is just like other religions in terms of being the main cause of tragedies.

Worshipping false gods and people who say they are Christians but truly aren’t are the true reasons for the worst conflicts in history.

I will say that all of the ones that were mentioned by the site I posted were not Deists. You asked for a post of support for my position with a list of people who are not Deists. So if you read for yourself from that site I mentioned you can see the ones that are not Deist. I value what you call a “rambling screed unworthy of serious discussion”. So for me it speaks for itself. It gives clear footnotes that you can go research for yourself. Maybe you should do that. It seemed really substantiated to me.

On the professed Christian/athesit thing. I don’t breakdown people into “professed” for me I breakdown people based on who actually are and who aren’t “by their fruit you shall know them”. When I see what you call “professed Christians” who actually aren’t doing things that aren’t Christian and see actual atheists who not only profess they are but are, then I don’t see how Christianity can be like other religions in terms of

I think you don’t agree with Justin based on this: “Actually, secular ideologies, specifically communism and National Socialism (Nazism) has destroyed more lives the Abrahamic religions, combined. To a small extent I could include the euthenasia and sterilization projects (look up Buck vs. Bell, and stick the “keep your laws off my body” tripe up your nose). If I felt inclined I’d include abortion; where even “pro-choice” folks have agreed that 4-5000 abortions in the United Stats PER DAY average is far too many.” When one seperates the “professed” from the “actual” (sinve we know people in Arizona claim to be Christian who are polygimists who we know actually not thereby making the comparison stupid not because of the same number like you said but in terms that Christianity in terms of number hasn’t promoted more evils than other religions.) then one can realize that Christianity gets a bad rap unnecesarily.

Why compare “professed Christians” and “professed atheists” to show there is no difference when in all actuality when one does the same comparison among “actual Christians” and “actual Christians” you get a comparison where the facts show something different than what you are claiming? That is what I was getting at. When one looks at the first paragraph of Justin’s comment then you can see the facts that True Christianity is not to be blamed for all of the worlds ills in comparison to others.

dh: The US Constitution specifically forbids both the establishment of religion and the requirement of religious oaths in order to hold office. If the founding fathers desired to found an explicitly Christian nation, you’d think they would have said so. They were all quite eloquent and given to lengthy discourses over everything under the sun. Yet there are no religious requirements for citizenship or for holding office (even for holding the highest office in the land. That’s a rather telling omission.

I’m still waiting on you to point out which of the Deists I listed are not Deists. Your vague dismissal of them and a link to some site doesn’t answer the question. I want to know which ones you, dh, in your infinite wisdom are not Deists, since you claimed that not all of them are. You can’t do that, because they are all Deists, as can rather easily be shown by quoting from their works, with which you claim to be familiar.

As to “professed” verses “true” believers or unbelievers: the problem is that there is more than one definition of Christianity. What counts as a “true” Christian to you, to Tim, and to me are quite different. Yet each of us will believe that his definition is the accurate one. This is not a problem limited to us as individuals. What counts as a “true” Christian varies across cultures and times. This is why we have different denominations. This should be self evident.

Since there is no objective criteria (e.g. a blood test) that can tell a “true” member of a group from a false one, you have two choices: 1) you can either take people at their word, or 2) you can draw up a list of beliefs that are necessary and sufficient in order to be a member of some group and test the person against the list. But, again, subjectivity will come into play. We will each claim our lists are the “true criteria” and there will be no sorting it out. And, even if we agree on criteria, we will have to interpret behaviors. And that is yet another subjective quagmire. So I’ve found the only way forward in this sort of argument is to take people at their word and qualify that such labels are self-reported.

Your argument about abortion is a red herring: atheists are an incredibly small percentage of the population in the US and thus an incredibly small proportion of people who receive that particular medial procedure. If you have stats to the contrary, I’d like to see them.

Your other big—and entirely false—assumption is that killing is consistent with atheism. But atheism merely means that one lacks belief in deities. Lacking belief in deities does not mean killing becomes okay. If that were true, then believing in deities should cure us of killing, yet it clearly does not (atheists are also a very small percentage of killers and the incarcerated in general).

I still think you misunderstand Justin’s point.

Content of this debate aside, I must point out that Wheat’s assessment of the use of websites for reference is correct. Wikipedia cannot be disregarded in favor of a personal web page on members.aol.com. While Wikipedia is not perfect, it is backed-up and edited by the minute by thousands of people around the world. A personal web page on AOL’s webspace is just that — a personal page, compiled, written, and edited by a single person (that is, unless the content has been copied from another source). Comparing the content of the AOL page to Wikipedia is like comparing this website to Wikipedia. As such, I am (usually) clear that the content posted on this site are the opiniopns of the authors — specifically myself when writing the originating posts. Likewise, as with most personal sites, the content is highly likely to change without warning, therefor bringing the validity of this site’s content into question again.

If you would like to read an interesting review of the validity of Wikipedia, please read this:

http://news.com.com/Study+Wikipedia+as+a..

(Or Google for your own reference.)

I agree typically with what you sais about personal websites. However, the only reason I posted that site is that it clear footnotes and references. Also the reason that in this particular case I was critical of Wikipedia is that it didn’t reference clear posts that show the contraversy of saying that some the founders listed in wikipedia were actually deists. I have read books on the founding fathers and in addition I thought the references and footnotes from the site were credible. If you want anybody can research the sites footnotes. They had hyperlinks. Also, wikipedia never quoted any of the many quotes in other sources that contradict that many of the founders were deists. I will agree that some were but not in the grand scale that Wheat and Wikipedia say. That is not a condemnation of wikipedia because on 95% of things it is reliable source but on some topics, as you know about encyclopedias, it has its limitations.

Again, read the site again and you will get your answer. There are two founders I would consider that might be considered Deist. However, I have read that these two founders had conversion experiences in their old age that for each made them not be Deist anymore. The first is Thomas Jefferson, again he had a conversion experience late in his life, and to a lesser extent (my tenth great uncle by was of his brother his favorite sybling John who is my ninth great grandpa) Benjamin Franklin. He did have articles written that make me say, lesser extent, where he says that “...one must have a personal relationship with the triune God”. Even though I agree withyou that these two were deists, they did have conversion experiences very late in life that made them recant or at least to appear to change and/or recant their deist beliefs.

Did you read my reply? I AGREED with you that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were for a super majority of their life deists. The fact that they had conversion experiences doesn’t change that agreement with you nor substantiates what I have said about the Founding Fathers not all of them being Deist. I never said that ALL of them were and in fact agreed with you on two of them. What is the problem here? You seem to be talking to the choir when I agree with you that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were deists. You references with regard to Thomas Jefferson I have read before you presented them I know and I never disagreed with you on him. You are preaching to the choir. I did say that both Jefferson and Franklin had conversion expereinces but that doesn’t change our agreement. Gosh.

Have you read the book “Faith of the Founding Fathers” by David L. Holmes (professor of Religious Studies at William & Mary)? He is a teacher by profession, has a PHd. and is a professor at a very respected University.

I never disagreed with you. There were some that were desits. I said that. I gave you a site that had footnotes and references to substantiate where the particular founders were not Desits for those who weren’t.

The book “Faith of the Founding Fathers” by David L. Holmes substantiates the claims I have made about how many of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Paine were not deists. He is professor of Religious studies at William & MAry. To me he seems very reputible. It seems to me “the jury is out” on your deism claims for some of the ones you reference. However, I have never disagreed with you about Jefferson and Franklin.

It looks like an interesting book, dh. I appreciate the recommendation. A few reviews that I checked out of it suggest that maybe you missed the point of it as well:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/books/..

Here’s a quote from the review: “According to David L. Holmes’s ‘Faiths of the Founding Fathers,’ none of the first five presidents were conventional Christians. All were influenced to one degree or another by Deism, the once-popular view that God set the world in motion and then abstained from human affairs.”

So thanks for making my point for me. This does, indeed, look like a respectable source. Is that deathbed conversion story you alluded to earlier as well heeled? I’m skeptical at this point.

I sincerely thank you for the book recommendation. I’ll add it to my list. Since you admit that Jefferson and Franklin were deists (at least up until their mythical deathbed conversions), I can take it, conversely, that your claim is now that the remaining founding fathers I mentioned were not Deists: Thomas Paine, John Adams, and James Monroe.

Funny that you would single out Thomas Paine. I have read The Age of Reason in its entirety (and Common Sense too, come to think of it). And, of the founding fathers I mentioned, he is the clearest Deist in the bunch. He’s quite open about his beliefs and his hostility toward Christianity. I’ll have to read Holmes’ book for myself to see what he makes of him. But, if you haven’t read Paine, you might enjoy him. Here’s a snippet:

From The Age of Reason
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman
church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of….Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and of my own part, I disbelieve them all.”
Source: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/p..

That’s from the University of Adelaide’s very fine etext of it:
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/p..

While the quote above does not establish Paine as a Deist (which can very easily be done with other quotations from the same source), it does exclude him as a Christian, thus also excluding any claim that he desired to found the US as a Christian nation, unless you can find a text to that effect. So, if you still want to quibble, we can discuss John Adams and James Monroe. I claim victory on Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine.

Being influenced and being deist are not the same thing. I never. However, it appears that Franklin in the above quote goes against your claim. Also, Paine up until being late in his life was a Christian but it appears it was only in his head in that late in life he recanted. If you read Paines writinge BEFORE the “Age of Reason” one can see that.

On Jefferson and Franklin there is no “winning” because I never contradicted you on those except to point out Franklin’s quote directly above. Again you are preaching to the choir.

Here are some other founding Fathers who were not deists: Alexander Hamilton “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me.”

Patrick Henry: ““It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!” and “This is all the inheritance I give to my dear family. The religion of Christ will give them one which will make them rich indeed.”

John Jay: “ While in France . . . I do not recollect to have had more than two conversations with atheists about their tenents. The first was this: I was at a large party, of which were several of that description. They spoke freely and contemptuously of religion. I took no part in the conversation. In the course of it, one of them asked me if I believed in Christ? I answered that I did, and that I thanked God that I did.”

George Washington: “Bless my family, kindred, friends and country, be our God & guide this day and for ever for his sake, who lay down in the Grave and arose again for us, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

. . . in and for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ offered upon the cross for me; for his sake, ease me of the burden of my sins, and give me grace that by the call of the Gospel I may rise from the slumber of sin into the newness of life.”

dh: I don’t recall ever claiming that Washington, Hamilton, Henry, or Jay were Deists. The case for Washington is not as clear cut as you make it out in your unsourced quotation. He, among all the other founding fathers, was apparently quite private with his religious belief and apparently, to an even greater extent than Jefferson, felt religion should be a private matter. And the remarks he makes about religion are few. But, as I know considerably less about his views, I made no claim about him one way or the other.

I think the quotation by Congress dated in 1777 supported by those in Congress and supported by much of the people we discussed today confirm what I said. I will leave with this and we both should probably stop as this discussion has been beneficial and you have acknowledged that many of the Founders were Christian. I only mentioned those you didn’t mention to address your question “Which of the Founding Fathers were Christian”. Hense my replies the same:

“Here is a quote approved by the Congress in 1777 with regard to the US:

“ Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to
adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to
acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to Him for
benefits received and to implore such farther blessings as
they stand in need of . . .[to offer] humble and earnest
supplication that it may please God, through the merits
of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive
and blot [our sins] out of remembrance . . .
and to prosper the means of religion
for the promotion and enlargement of
that kingdom which consisteth ‘in
righteousness, peace, and joy in the
Holy Ghost.’” – United States
Congress, November 1, 1777””