“In light of your earlier PC protestations, then was ever Wallace supporter jeopardizing his immortal soul? Are people who support an ethnic component to Israel on a freight train to Hell? What is to stop a social justice type Christian from condemning everyone to Hell who doesn’t support welfare or the more libertarian inclined Christian from condemning to Hell everyone who does support welfare?”

Now I’ve upset you, and you didn’t notice that I’d confined the field to some rather obvious evil acts: The destruction of human beings in the service of “medical research” and the launching of pre-emptive war upon an unsuspecting nation. I won’t help you make those contentions absurd. And the Wallace business, you see merit in racial segregation? You’ll recall, perhaps, my description of Dobson as having made an ideology of his faith and his devolution into a kind of anti-Democrat. One would hope that with your more than considerable focus upon political correctness here that these same forces haven’t bound you over to a similar slavery. Egad, man, recover your freedom!

“For someone opposed to assurance, you sure do seem mighty certain.”

Well, we can be sure that we can’t be sure it would seem.

I sure hope that is not the way it works. If it is, it will certainly be hard to sleep at night while hoping I got it all right.

For someone opposed to assurance, you sure do seem mighty certain.

At a moral level, Dobson has responsibility for the positions he takes, and particularly so in his capacity as a spokesman or leader. If he’s going to endorse and encourage others to endorse concepts ranging from stem-cell research – which he has – to pre-emptive war, even though he is not the one actually implimenting the evil acts themselves, he is, nevertheless, formally complicit in them. To say that such complicity has no important impact on his standing in the sight of God because of some curious belief in the notion of “blessed assurance” is just the most palpably antimonian nonsence imaginable.

“There will never be a genuine rightist counter-revolutionary movement in this country that doesn’t include large portions of those who are now GOP backing and war supporting Christian conservatives. The math does not work without them.”

You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I were not to consider promoting a “rightist counter-revolutionary movement” quite as desirable a purpose in life as seeking the form of Christ in the world. Math is simply unimportant in these latter precincts.

There will never be a genuine rightist counter-revolutionary movement in this country that doesn’t include large portions of those who are now GOP backing and war supporting Christian conservatives. The math does not work without them. That is why I think they need to be persuaded instead of berated. They are also due respect as Christian brothers.

“I prefer to “chew on” the plain text of Scripture.”

As I’d mentioned above, it is not my desire to engage in an exhaustive discussion of the Redemption here, but you seem unwilling to accept that. While you’re chewing on the “plain text of Scripture”, ask yourself if you don’t bring preconceived thought-forms to the experience. Tell me that you don’t, that you’re free of these influences, and I’ll tell you you’ve got an argument both with Werner Heisenberg and not just a few respected evangelical theologians, among them, Kuiper. These thought-forms are called presuppositions in the trade and the ones that you are almost certainly bringing with you to any reading of the so-called “plain text of Scripture” are nominalist in character. The experience of reading Scripture isn’t simply a matter of dealing with a kind of object, you know – like reading a stop sign in some detacted way – it is rather an engagement with the text that brings you as person to the affair quite dynamically. So there can be no such thing as “the plain text of Scripture”, there can be only you together with the text. Capisci? The idea of “the plain text of Scripture” is an abstraction.

I’m going to recommend a book to you. Its Louis Bouyer’s, The Spirit And Forms Of Protestantism. Read it, you’ll benefit enormously from it.

“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5: 13)

What part of “know” is confusing?

“..you see, i told you.. lowell ain’t all bad!.. ;o)”

I’m also very good looking, Clark.

I really don’t wish to get into an exhaustive discussion of the Redemption here, perhaps on some other occasion. Let it suffice to say for now that the consistent teaching of the Church over its long, two thousand year history is that no one may with certainty assume what his status may be in the sight of God and that it is the very essence of arrogance to believe otherwise. What you describe here is a novelty more the consequence of the impact of nominalism on late period neo-scholasticism than anything one might derive from Holy Scripture. It sees the realities from the impoverished perspective of the psychological order, ignoring the more fundamental ontological order in its entirety. I’ll leave you with that; you may wish to chew on it on bit.

..you see, i told you.. lowell ain’t all bad!.. ;o)

One very important foundational principle of National Socialism was ethnic purity. As you almost certainly know, it embarked upon one of the most intense campaigns of ethnic cleansing the world has ever known. The widespread political and financial support given by evangelicals to the concept of a “Greater Israel”, to the growth of the outrageous Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and to the consequent displacement of Palestinians on this land is of a piece with the Nazi forced resettlement of Jews to ghettos in wartime Poland. And there is, of course, their almost unanimous and unquaified backing of a regime whose immoral official policies in support of evesdropping, torture and pre-emptive war leave little to think about when it comes to identifying an historical predecessor. If it looks like a duck and it acts like a duck, trust me, its a duck.

...the only constitution party cheerleader i personally know is a raving lunatic who believes people engaged in ‘abortion’ should be killed by ‘the state’..

...although i don’t profess expertise in ‘christianity,’ as would some goddamned fool/phony, i can’t believe christ Himself would have people killed by ‘the state’ for engaging in ‘abortion’..

..the constipation party seems like a mere stinking quibbling offshoot of the stinking republicant party..as does the stinking bob barf wing on the Libertarian Party..

...btw, although i won’t be wasting any 4 federal reserve token/gallon gasoline going to ?your stinking republicrat polls this november, if i was forced to vote for someone on the ballot…i vote baldwig…at least he tries to talk a little about ‘the money thing’..(and if he were more knowledgeable about ‘it’ i would waste the gas!).. ;o)

...and although some of the cp’ers here appear decently ‘anti-war’..i must say from reading some constipation party fools on other forums, etc.. many cp’ers, in general, seem like miserable goddamned fool warmongers/imperialists..

..of course, ‘Libertarians’ have their barfbags and dunder0’s too!.. ;o)

“Are you questioning the fate of Dobson’s immortal soul? That is the effect of saying he is no longer a Christian. Dobson has always been political. He was a very early backer of the homeschool movement back when a lot of other Christians thought it was nuts.”

The question of the fate of Dobson’s person – it is the person that survives death, not simply the soul or life principle – is very much in play at the moment and will not be known for some time yet. I would most earnestly suspect that you or I will not know his fate with any certainty until we know our own. So there’s time for him. Now if we could only get him out of that oberstgruppenfuehrer uniform he been wearing.