The Church of Ephesus and Cessationism

First of all don't read too much into this premise.  I'm not arguing every Cessationist congregation is an Ephesus or that you need to be Cessationist to be an Ephesus.  And even though I'm a Continutationist making this observation, this potential relationship could be true even if Cessationism is true.  Ephesus has the third best review of the Seven Churches so it's by no means an inherently derogatory association, and the two with better reports are NOT praised for their Doctrines.

One of the main things Ephesus is praised for is exposing and rejecting False Apostles, and while in the immediate context I think this refers to the same "ravenous wolves" Paul warned the Ephesians about at Miletus in Acts 20:29, in terms of applying this to then future and now contemporary Church issues I feel it can tie into how I in-spite of being a Continuationsit on the Spiritual Gifts in general do believe the Office of Apostle was only for the first generation of The Church, that being one required being an Eye Witness to The Resurrection and that Paul defined himself as the last to become an Apostle.

So I get uncomfortable when people like the host of The Prophecy Club calls himself an Apostle, but I think this can also apply to the Catholic/Orthodox concept of Apostolic succession, and to the Temple Lot Mormons calling their leaders a Quorum of Apostles.  And any other Pentecostal or Charismatic leaders calling themselves an Apostle.

And I have other areas of disagreement with many of my fellow Continuationists, I have been considering rejecting the usual identification of Thyatira with the Catholic Church and instead seeing it's False Prophetess as embodying many of the excesses of the more problematic Charismatic tendencies.  

My reading of Corinthians on this issue is Paul taking the same Contiuationist position I do and needing to deal with both Proto-Cessationists and overly reckless Charismatics causing problems in the Corinthian Church.

The main criticism of Ephesus is that they lost their First Love.  I feel like rejecting the Spiritual Gifts is quite possibly the only way to truly do that.  But even if Cessationism is true, I think many Cessationsits especially the Baptists should consider that their reactionary response to what some Contiuationists are doing wrong can potentially lead to that.

The fact that Paul's Epistle to Ephesus is one that gets into Spiritual Warfare a lot could also be evidence that Congregation was slowly becoming one that neglected the Spirit.

In which case I also think it's also highly likely for Sardis churches to be Cessationists since they are spiritually dead.  They would be churches with Ephesus's vices but not it's virtues.

I reject calling Mary Theotokos because it's UnBiblical

To me that's what should matter to Sola Scriptura Christians. It's technical accuracy or one's opinion on other issues related to the Nestorian Schism should be irrelevant.  If you want to call Mary a title it should be something Scripture directly says of her.

This issue is not my only area of affinity or at least sympathy with Theodore of Mopsuesta, Nestorius and the Ancient Church of The East.  The main thing that makes me hesitant to simply identify as a Nestorian is that they like Cyril and Augustine strongly stress the Platonic doctrine of Divine Impassibility and are thus hostile to the Theopaschite Formula.  To me that it was the "Fullness of the Godhead" and not merely a Man suffering on The Cross is what makes the Atonement truly work, regardless of what theory of Atonement you take.  But I'm not prepared to make a full post on that topic yet.

I've seen people use Luke 1:43 as Biblical support for Theotokos as a title for Mary, where Elizabeth says.

"And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"

Problem is if you want to use this verse as your defense of a Greek title for Mary it should be the Greek words used in this verse.  Which are Meter and Kuriou not Theos or Tokos.  

So yes I'm kind of rejecting even the Tokos part as well.  We tend to translate this phrase as "Mother of God" (and Nestorius's alternative Christtokos as "Mother of Christ") but that's not truly accurate.  Tokos is a very technical term for the act of carrying a baby, you could equally apply it to a incubator.  Meter is the familial title of Mother which I think is far more fitting to describe Mary's relationship to Jesus.

But back to what people are usually disputing.  Using this verse to defend Theotokos is based on assuming every use of a form of Kurios in the New Testament must be merely the Jewish custom of using it to stand in for the Tetragramaton, the Holy Name of God, Yot-Heh-Vav-Heh which I prefer to pronounce Yahuah.  However I believe that assumption is never correct of any occurrence of "my Lord", I believe "my Lord" is always a translation of the Hebrew Adoni which in pre-masoretic texts is sometimes difficult to distinguish from Adonai.

Psalm 110 in the KJV begins with "The LORD said unto my Lord" which in the Hebrew is "YHWH said unto Adoni".  All three Synoptic Gospels quote this with the "my Lord" being in reference to Melchizedek as a type of Christ.

I want to mention the Peshita briefly.  Luke's Gospel is one of the many NT books where I consider there to be no basis for Peshita primacy, the book was definitely originally in Greek.  But looking at it as a witness to how Early Semitic Speaking Christians translated it can still be useful.  For Kurios verses the Peshita uses Mar-Yah whenever it's a stand in for YHWH but simply a form of Mar when it's merely a form of Adon.  This verse in the Peshita uses Mari (my Lord) not Mar-Yah (but the Peshita does use Mar-Yah in reference to Jesus elsewhere).

So the Greek title for Mary I would construct from this verse is one using a form of Kurious and a form of Meter.  But as a Weeb I think I'll go with AkaaSan-no-Sama, or I could use Mikoto instead of Sama but that is a bit more obscure a reference for westerners.

I agree with the Theology and Christology of the original Nicene Creed including Homousian.  However while The Bible supports Jesus being God in a Trinitarian sense, The New Testament is far more interested in stressing Him as Christ, The Lord and most importantly the Son of God.  That's Peter's essential dramatic Confession, and Martha's in John 11 and what the first verse of Mark says, and what 1 John 4:15 says anyone who confesses that God Dwells in them.  

So I do think it's bothersome how often modern Western Christianity obsesses over Jesus as God and forgets to stress that The Trinity is a Family that we are being Adopted into.  The relationship between God and Jesus is that of a Father and Son.  

And as a Weeb I like to refer to The Holy Spirit as Onee-Sama.  Proverbs 7:4 is the basis for calling Wisdom(Sophia) a word for Sister and I've argued elsewhere for her being The Holy Spirit.

The French Revolution is still one of the most misunderstood subjects of History

[Update: My conflation of the Girondins and the Society of the Friends of Truth was a Mistake and Brissiot was ultimately a Liberal.  But it is still true that the primary perpetrators of the Terror were not the Communists and the people who were became victims of it.]

You can be a Zionist and still be critical of the Israeli Government

Of the political disagreements I have with my fellow Twitter Leftists, my belief that Israel has the right to exist is perhaps the most contentious.

I am a Zionist, but I am also an Anarchist, I hate all Governments and much of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is atrocious.  But as long as Nation-States are going to be a thing, on that land it needs to be a Jewish one so the world's most oppressed minority can have a safe heaven to flee to, the Muslims have more then enough.  But I do believe Israel should give the Golan Heights to Jordan, give full citizenship to all Palestinian living in Israel, and stop responding to Hamas in Gaza so badly since their attempts to fire rockets at Israel never even do anything.

None the less every time I allow myself to get involved in one of these twitter threads, they keep trying to make me feel ashamed of my Zionism by talking about things the Israeli government is doing which have nothing to do with Zionism as a principle.  Remember these are the same people who don't like seeing Marxism blamed for the Human Rights violations of Stalin and modern China.  And likewise don't want Islam being blamed for what the Saudis do.

I believe all similar major minorities have a right to a home land, the Kurds, the Yazids, the Ainu and Okinawa and every Native American tribe that still exists.  But the "Palestinians" already have one, it's called Jordan, they are the majority of Jordan's population, the only thing keeping it from being a strictly Palestinian State is that it isn't a Direct Democracy..

I am confident that there is enough habitable room in Israel for all of the world's Jews plus twice the number of Gentiles who currently live there.  It is Capitalism not Zionism that is making these people fight over land and resources.  But it is only with Israel where it is appropriate on the Left to say the answer is one of these people groups shouldn't even be allowed to be there.

They keep calling Zionism a form of Colonialism.  If it's appropriate to refer to Post-Colonial things you don't like as Colonialism then it's also valid to call Pre-Colonial things Proto-Colonialism.  And it was Proto-Colonialism that removed the Jews from that land and placed Gentile "Holy Sites" in Jerusalem in the first place.

The Jerusalem of the Hasmoneans was basically completely annihilated in 70 AD, then in 132 Hadrian began plans to build a Greco-Roman city on the spot named after himself and that sparked another Jewish uprising which he brutally put down.  Then he built his gentile city and renamed the province and Jews were forbidden to even set foot in the city, a policy that shamefully the Christian Emperors kept.

However Jews were never completely gone from the region, many stayed in or settled in Galilee where they had a couple revolts agaisnt Christian Emperors.  But when Calif Umar captured Jerusalem he allowed Jews to return there creating what is now known as the Jewish Quarter which has been continuously inhabited by Jews ever since.  However later Califs eventually built Mosques on The Temple Mount, specifically Abd Al-Malik built them where Mecca was under the control of Rebels, their creation was always political.

There have been a lot of controversies lately about the American Government and/or Corporations building things on Sacred Native land.  I don't understand how religions that are inherently younger then Judaism building Churches and Mosques on the only land Judaism considers Sacred isn't viewed the same way?

So yes, religion is a major factor in why this land specifically was the land we gave to the Jews.  Thing is when you go back to their actual founding Sacred Texts, every still existing religion that gives any amount of sacredness to that land 100% agrees on who it belongs to.  The Koran says that the land of Israel belongs to the Children of Israel.  Muslim opposition to Zionism is a product of modern Wahhabism funded and prompted by the Saudis.  And New Testament Christianity is not interested in tying itself to any specific pieces of geographical real-estate at all.

The cultures that existed in this land before the Ancient Israelites no longer exist, whether or not some Palestinians have a connection to them in terms of genealogical ancestry is irrelevant, they no longer practice the same religion or customs, they are mostly Muslims, some are Christians, some may now be Atheists, and I'm sure some Canaanite Neo-Pagan group exists but there would be no actual continuity there.

Dog Whistles are a term we on the Left use to condemn things not explicitly bigoted as bigotry via guilt by association.  But when it comes to Antisemitism, the only thing constantly said by Antisemites you are NOT allowed to say is inherently Antsemitic is saying the Jews don't have a right to their homeland.  You can't utter the words "international banker" without being called a closet Nazi, but saying something that is definitely unambiguously bigoted when said about any other oppressed minority is perfectly fine.

I think maybe those of us who oppose Capitalism should be concerned about there being an entire subgroup of super rich Capitalists that have become free from criticism because the small number of them who have Ashkenazi surnames are the only ones most people have heard of.  But still it is true 90% of people singling out "international bankers" of all super rich people to complain about are at least indirectly influenced by Antisemitic conspiracy theories.  And likewise Anti-Zionism was founded upon Holocaust Denial and Anti-Rothschild conspiracy theories long before anyone in the west gave a damn about a sub group of Arabs naming themselves after the Latinized form of the Hellenized form of the name of a people who haven't existed since Alexander The Great burned their last city to the ground.

And sometimes people will try to use things like the 1933 Transfer Agreement to say "Zionism and Antisemitism actually go together".  Hitler at first tried to just kick the Jews out because he didn't think he'd have the ablity to do the Genocide he always preferred. But that arrangement was one he was inevitably going to back out of just like the pact with Stalin.

The people currently running Israel can go f--- themselves, but I will not apologize for defending The Jews right to their ancient sacred homeland.

Zionism is an inherently Leftist ideology in origin and in fact predates Marxism, the crimes of the Israeli state should not invalidate the ideology of Moses Hess anymore then those of the USSR, China and North Korea invalidate Marx and Engles.

BTW you may notice I didn't even bring up any Prophecy.  I actually reject certain Eschatological positions assumed to go with being a Christian Zionist.  I'm not Pre-Trib or a proper Dispensationalist and I don't even expect there to be a Third Temple, and I view the Gog and Magog Invasion as after the Millennium.  I actually don't currently solidly believe much of anything specific in regards to Israel's role in the End Times.  While that geographical land definitely has a role to play in what I think will happen, a modern Jewish State being there is not required at all, I only presume Israel relevant because that is the current geopolitical situation we have to start from.  My theories about "the antichrist" focus on their probable relationship with The Church not Judaism.  But at any-rate I don't think the Temple's actual site is on either those Mosques, I currently favor the Dome of the Tablets theory.

So my Zionism is more in-spite of my Eschatology then Because of it.

The New Testament is Collectivist not Individualist

First of all to properly understand what I mean by Individualism and Collectivism in this post I suggest you watch this Peter Coffin video Individualism V. Individuality, it's only half an hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eijYEYzAQu0

In the modern world Indivdualism is associated with certain ideologies that in America at least are generally classified as Conservative.  Now a lot of these people are Conservative Atheists, Ayn Rand was an Atheist, she knew her brand of Individualism was utterly incompatible with proper Christian values.  But some of these Conservatives are Christians like Jordan Peterson who's technically Canadian but the thing about Canada is if your a Conservative in Canada you probably obsess over America in reaction to how much Canadian Liberalism is founded on hating America.

However a more obscure figure in the modern YouTube Right is a channel called TIK who have made some interesting videos on Hitler and Mussolini being one of the few YouTubers interested in acknowledging their differences, both are bad but they had differences that make Hitler worse, however being better then Hitler is not a grand endorsement.  In one video of his I watched he talks about the history of states and power systems from his POV and then says Jesus introduced the concept of the Individual.  So I assume that means to him the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that the Old Testament is Collectivist since it's about Israel and the New Testament's innovation was that now God made Covenants with Individuals not a Collective.

This view of the New Testament doesn't hold up.  Anything you can make sound Individualist about the New Testament was already there in The Torah, the punishments already punished individuals for example.  The actual innovation of the New Testament is that it's expanding the Collective, or rather returning God's focus to all of Adamkind.

The TNAK starts out about all of Humanity, the first 10 and a half chapters of Genesis. And on occasion YHWH reminded Israel that he still cares about the rest of the world like in Ezekiel 16 (the parts about Sodom) and Daniel 2-7.

In Matthew Jesus talks about gentiles entering the Kingdom before some of the Children of the Kingdom, that's not an expression of Individualism but of outsiders being let into the Collective.  

The Sheeps and Goats Judgment in Matthew 25 is defined as being of "Nations" not Individuals.

Paul in Romans 5 talks about all being made Sinners because of one Man's Sin, but then all being made righteous because of one Man's righteousness, similar to how he discuses Death and Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.  Then in Romans 11 he says the fullness of the "Nations" will be grafted into Israel and then ALL Israel shall be Saved.  And that God consigned ALL to disobedience so that He might have Mercy on ALL.

Elsewhere The New Testament talks about The Church being the Bride of Christ and Body of Christ and Temple of God.  Inherently Collectivist symbolism.  Even when Paul brings our Individual being Individual Temples of the Holy Ghost in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and 6:18-20 it's tied into that grander doctrine and clearly arguing agaisnt Lockean Self Ownership (or Body Ownership as some modern libertarian prefer to rephrase it) our Bodies are ultimately owned by God but also collectively shared with the rest of the Community of Believers.

It was the advent of Calvinism V. Armianism that laid the foundation of Individualizing The Gospel, in both those systems Salvation is a covenant with an Individual they only disagree on who to give the agency in that Covenant.  ColdCrashPictures calls Objectivism "Prosperity Gospel for Atheists" an analogy that immediately reminded me of my own calling Existentialism is Atheistic Arminianism.

But not all Collectivist Ideologies are good, Fascism is very Collectivist as is Nationalism.  That's why I stress how The Gospel is an Inclusivist Collectivism.

It was Gerrard Winstanley who introduced Universal Salvation to the Modern-English speaking world, and he was also a Communist.  What untied the true Gospel and Communism so naturally is that both are founded on the true Collectivist perspective of The New Testament.

Update: Here is another good Peter Hiett Sermon.

https://youtu.be/HfT5YDD_-tM?list=PLehrY6axvoewN-jVBcGc5qH5sZog5RzT3

The Truth about the Hamiltonian v Jeffersonian conflict

First of all it's a bit of an oversimplification even to make it seem like all the "founding fathers" fell neatly into two simple camps.  Even Adams was not quite a pure Hamiltonian.

Meanwhile Thomas Paine was literally a Pre-Marx Communist.  And for nearly 200 years everyone knew that, he was disowned from being counted as a Founding Father by Patriotic Americans for most of the 19th and 20th Centuries during which time the only people who liked him were Marxists and other Socialists.  But then Ronald Reagan started quoting Paine as if they agreed on anything and only then did even Paine become a founder the modern American right thought they could appropriate.

However the greater point of this post is the absurdity of the desire Americans have to see our current political debates as a neat linear continuation of the debates between Hamilton and Jefferson.

Alexander Hamilton was a big government Conservative while Thomas Jefferson was a small government Liberal.  In modern American politics those terms seem like inherent contradictions, but the historical fact is the modern American way of thinking about that is the aberration.  During the age of Revolutions the idea of being a small government Conservative was a complete and total oxymoron completely unprecedented in 6000 years of human history.

On the modern American political spectrum the closest group we have to modern Jeffersonians are the American Libertarians, but even that analogy has flaws.  Plenty of Libertarians are aware of their overlap with Jefferson and like to then paint the Democrats and Republicans as merely an internal dispute among the Hamiltonians.  However even that doesn't pan out.

The modern Democrats and Republicans in addition to each breaking with Hamilton in some way on where they disagree with each other are in fact in even greater conflict with Hamilton in the areas where they agree.  Neither party wants the Presidency to be a lifetime appointment, neither wants to limit the right to vote to only wealthy land owners and both support legal immigration only disagreeing on how much leniency to give "illegal immigrants".

On some of those issues it may seem like many Republicans would like to take Hamilton's position but just know they can't get away with it currently.  But their fundamental belief in "states rights" and "cutting taxes" make them firmly incompatible with Hamiltonian Federalism.  The only modern parties that kind of agree with Hamilton on having a strong federal government are completely opposed to Hamilton in terms of what that government power should be used for.

I'm going to be consistent and not call Hamilton a Fascist since I am someone who criticizes when that term is used too loosely including by my fellow Leftists.  There is at least one core ingredient of Fascism Hamilton was hostile to and that was Populism, Hamilton was disgusted by the very idea of trying to gain political support from the unwashed peasants.  But his actual position on Immigration would get him called a Fascist by most of Tumblr and Breadtube.

There is no actual Hamiltonian party in modern American politics, and no that's not based on allowing any minor disagreement to rule someone out, every Party or Politician capable of gaining even 1% of the vote in a modern election has some major break with a core foundational principle of Hamilton's ideology.  That's why he was the least celebrated Founding Father before a certain Rapper decided he weirdly identified with him as that Musical laments at the end. 

However the United States is ironically the only nation where Hamiltonianism is completely dead.  I would say Alfred Hugenberg was basically the Hamiltonian of Weimar Germany.  The Party that has dominated Japan for most of it's post-War history the LDP is Hamiltonianism for Japan as purely as any party could be.

Now remember Anime is a Niche interest even in Japan.  Most Art tends towards being at least a little left of the center of the culture that produced it, but Anime in particular makes most of it's money off less then 10% of the total population.  So with few exceptions most Anime is made by people who's political leanings range from Jefferson to Paine.  Though obviously none of them would use American figures to define their politics, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and Lafayette don't even show up in any of the many Anime depicting The French Revolution (which Hamilton btw absolutely opposed long before the Terror gave him an excuse).

Update April 2021:  I stumbled on this YT video which in fact already existed when I first wrote this.

https://youtu.be/Zt4lmLK_OUc

That video is not the Libertarian perspective I criticized above, but rather part of the Genre of trying to make the Federalists sound like modern Democrats and the Jeffersonians sound like modern Republicans.  The deception in this video is mostly lies by omission, and it generally misrepresents Hamilton more then it does Jefferson.  Because yeah if Jefferson were alive today he probably would vote Republican at least during Primary season.

Hamilton wanted the Government involved in the Economy, in that sense he looks more like a modern Progressive.  But he did NOT want that interference to be on behalf of the workers or the poor, he wanted the Government getting involved to help big business.  He would absolutely be a Union buster if Unions were a thing yet.  He was for higher Taxes then Jefferson was, but he didn't want it being the wealthy who were Taxed but the workers.

The Federalists were also in bed with the Congregationalists who really wanted the Federal Government to enforce their Puritan Christian Moral Values on everyone which made that party greatly feared by the South (which was believe it or not fairly irreligious back then, and nominally what they were was Anglican/Episcopalian with Presbyterians in Appalachia) and all of the religious minorities in the Northern Colonies.  

Jefferson's "wall of separation" letter was to a Baptist Pastor (Baptists back then were still far from becoming the nation's largest Sect) in the context of promising to protect them from the Congregationalists.  Hamilton meanwhile constantly used Jefferson's lack of devoutness against him in his public attacks.  Hamilton was the only Founding Father who used Religion Politically the way modern Evangelical Republicans use it, even though Benjamin Rush was closer to agreeing with them Doctrinally (minus his belief in Universal Salvation).  Hamilton would absolutely have called Obama a Muslim.

His position on Immigration was openly Racist, he wanted the Untied States to be a WASP Ethno-State.  The Hamilton Musical presents Hamilton as an "immigrant" and stresses that repeatedly, but that was the most technical of technicalities.  He was a WASP who was born in one overseas WASP colony and moved to another overseas WASP colony.  No one would have thought of him as an Immigrant.

Another thing about that Musical that bugs me is how it tries to present the debate about getting involved in the post-French Revolutionary wars as analogous to the 2002-2003 Iraq War debate.  Now I am a Pacifist on nigh universal principal, but Hamilton was taking this position for the wrong reason.  And later when we got pulled into those wars on the other side of what Jefferson wanted the Federalists were the ones responsible for that, because Hamilton weirdly actually loved Britain in-spite of how he just successfully rebelled against it.  So no he didn't actually want us out of the War, he just wanted to wait till he could get us in on Brittan's side.

Since we're dealing with Europe which then like in the 1930s-40s was geo-politically the center of the world.  The debate over involvement in that war should perhaps be considered more analogous to the debate about World War 2 then Iraq.  The French Republic abolished Slavery and Emancipated Jews, but Brittan under Pitt's government was determined to re-enslave the Hattians.  Jefferson did change his tune on supporting the Republic when the Terror got out of control under Robespierre, but Hamilton and his modern selective fanboys paint The Revolution itself as inseparable from that madness.

In what way do I possibly still qualify as an Evangelical?

You can consider this a follow up of sort to What Kind of Christian am I.

That's a question one might ask when they see how Leftist I have become Politically and Progressive Socially with my old Libertarianism in regards to victimless crimes still in tact, combined with my now rejecting theologically the traditional view of Hell, and yet I still call myself an Evangelical from time to time.

Religion for Breakfast recently appeared in someone's video about Evangelicals and the Republican party however doing so only to define Evangeliclaism in religious terms separated from the politics.
https://youtu.be/zpLCIc5PvQw?t=148

He laid out four characteristics and I feel I line up with all of them.

1. Born Again Experience

On this one you can argue I'm not semantically since I now believe the Biblical use of Born Again in places like John 3 is about the Bodily Resurrection not something that happens at Conversion. But I still see importance in the Conversion experience, often preferring "Begotten Again" analogizing it to a new Conception rather then Birth.  Because of my Soterology I don't think only believers are Saved, and I don't think every "true believer" has to have a particularly dramatic experience, my own was relatively gradual.  However this conversion importance is why I'm with the Baptists on Baptism at least.

2. The Personal Relationship with Jesus I definitely value, and ironically this is exactly something most Evangelicals have been losing in their obsession with conservative politics.  And my status as a Continuationist makes me more Evangelical then most Baptists interestingly.  Andrew Henry cited Wesley as a founder of Evengelicalism, he condemned Slavery and called out the Founding Fathers on their hypocrisy.

3. Evangelism is another one I may relate to differently as a Universal Salvation believer.  But to me that just means I more accurately know what the Evangelion is.

4. I do believe The Bible is inerrant and the final authority.  The Conservatives are simply interpreting it wrong.  However I am still a Young Earth Creationist and stress a future Literal Bodily Resurrection in my Eschatology.