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God made man for fellowship. He made
us with an eternal positional order that will ultimately, for His
people, result in intimate oneness of fellowship with Him.
Mankind will play a uniquely special role in God’s order
of the universe higher than any other created being. Our uniquely
human gift is the ability to conduct relational fellowship primarily
through dialogue. It is through our minds and our dialogue that we
are able to express our “shared individuality.”
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It was the pagan philosopher Aristotle who articulated
the tools humans use to foist their beliefs in an attempt to
influence others. As is often the case in non-regenerate
man, God’s image produces useful insights even if they are
deployed for antichrist purposes. Through dialogue we are
able to move to a more meaningful level of fellowship. As
believers, the Holy Spirit mentors us into a closer
relationship with our Creator through the stories,
illustrations and facts found in the Bible. It is the
primary method through which we humans have the capacity to
lead our relational based existence.
According to Aristotle’s template, we communicate using
three devices of discourse; ethos, pathos, and logos. We
practice ethos when we express a thought deploying an
authoritative concept to achieve influence. We engage pathos
when we attempt to connect with the emotional or passionate
part of one’s character. We rely on logos when we appeal to
the logical or reasoning part of our makeup. All three of
these styles of expression envelop the verbal communicative
tools of our “fellowship nature.” |
In Isaiah God says “Come
now, let us reason together…” This is the pathos in which I
find my soul as I follow my Lord’s call to engage in this
undertaking.
| The Sixty Second Gospel
Some time ago, I concluded that the
gospel presentations which I had been privileged to learn in the
past left me unsatisfied. My understanding of and belief in the
message of the Bible is that God is sovereign in all things.
Even those who are serious students of scripture would not
challenge that dogma.
The problem is that often many who would
affirm the “God is sovereign” statement, at the same time, would
elevate man’s ability to determine his destiny to the same level
as God’s sovereignty. While one might say of course I don’t
ascribe to that, on the other hand would proclaim that man’s
“free will” is the determining factor to his salvation or, at
least, works together in a synergistic fashion with God’s will. |
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This mental calisthenics....
Read on here! |
