But Christian apologetics does not present itself in such an ambiguous manner. It presents itself as a Plinko board with simple yes/no, true/not true assertions with grave consequences if the chip falls left or right incorrectly.
Why concern yourself with how "Christian apologetics" presents itself?
It starts with the chip itself. Are we pure or corrupt by nature at birth? Then comes baptism or Anabaptist. Dunk, pour, or sprinkle once that is answered,
Who cares? We're not given instructions in scripture as to whether baptism should be performed with dunking. pouring or sprinkling. I doubt God, Who looks at the heart of the baptismal candidate, gives a damn. Why should you?
Finish it. ....... in order for what? Grace results in different effects than works.
forgiveness or remission of sin,
Again, finish it. ......... in order for what? They don't mean the same thing.
All. At this point, you're only decrying differences in belief. Both are grounded in a belief that Christ saves from sin. If Bob were to tell you that Fred did you a good deed while you were sick and laid up in bed, by mowing all the grass at another house you owned, and then Ralph comes along and tells you that Bob is incorrect, that Fred only cut your front yard, leaving the back unmowed, would you throw up your hands and say, "You guys are contradicting one another. So I doubt that Fred did anything."
Jesus existing as god from the beginning, his birth, the transfiguration, or anointed as such at resurrection and ascension..... and a myriad of other very simply applied gates to the tune of tens of thousands of denominational non-compatible concepts that make it clear we don't know Jesus very well
Exactly. We don't. In fact the more I learn of Him, the more I realize that I hardly know Him at all.
- even though some may claim he dwells intimately within them.
Perhaps in some His presence is recognized and in some it is not. It was several years after I first believed in Him that I began to feel His presence strong enough to state (to those whom I believed would not mock) that He dwelt within me.
The doctrinal issues started right in Acts and it all ends with a conundrum we've talked about recently.... Heaven or hell at death and whether hell is annihilation, Universalism, or eternal conscious suffering, and whether there is an actual free will in heaven without human nature pulling at you which might just redefine the nature of free will for us mortals as well.
Before I believed that ultimately Christ would save all of mankind. I believed in everlasting hell, and was deeply troubled by that belief. I did not come to my universalist viewpoint in order to rid myself of the philosophical consternation, but rather because I learned more of the Truth. A grade school student studying the Civil War may believe that the sole cause of the war was slavery. When he gets to high school and learns that there were also economic reasons such as imposed tariffs, that hardly means that Civil War historians were contradicting one another.
