guno
Gold Member
- Banned
- #81
Christianity is about how humans are saved legitimately.
God is incompatible with sin. He however would like to build an eternity to live with humans with freewill. Law is designed to reflect the incompatibility for those with freewill to obey in order to live with God in such an eternity.
Judgment is to qualify by Law who shall enter Heaven to live with God. Somehow Adam broke it and was put outside God's realm. Humans ever since are no longer inside God's realm. Instead we are in a realm where Satan is said to be the god of this world. Satan has the ability to deceive the world. When put in such a realm, no humans can keep this set of Law in full. In front of this absolute set of Law, no one is righteous, everyone is dead without exception.
In an absolute sense, no humans after Adam can ever pass the Judgment of God's Law to enter the gate of Heaven.
God however provides a solution for His Elect to be legitimately brought to Heaven. The solution is Jesus Christ. With Jesus Christ's once and for all sacrifice, it makes possible for God to grant a covenant to humans for them to be savable at all.
A covenant basically says, "since you humans cannot keep God's Law in full, you are give a chosen set of Law (such as Mosaic Law in a covenant granted to the Jews) which you can keep to a standard God specifies such that you will be save by God's Grace through Jesus Christ."
However as time goes by, even this chosen set of Law will put everyone to death, not even the righteous (people of God's Elect) can keep this chosen set of Law. Then God will upgrade the covenant with a newer one which will suppress the effect of Law while increasing the Grace in order for the righteous to be separated from the wicked.
This is done through successive covenants till the His Grace has been increased to 100%. It becomes the last and final and permanent covenant which is called the New Covenant (brought us by Jesus Himself). The chosen set of Law in a covenant disappeared, all we have is God's Grace through Jesus Christ. We only need faith in Christ/God to be saved.
Judaism does not believe in the devil, but do believe in Satan (who more properly should be called "the Satan"). As this demonstrates, the Jewish view of Satan is very different than the Christian one. Here's a summary of the Jewish view; you can also find information at Alyza (Gretchen) Shapiro's web site at Geocities has shut down
The word satan means "challenger", "difficulty", or "distraction" (note that it is not a proper name). With the leading ha- to make haSatan, it refers to /the/ challenger. This describes Satan as the angel who is the embodiment of man's challenges. HaSatan works for God. His job is to make choosing good over evil enough of a challenge so that it can be a meaningful choice. In other words, haSatan is an angel whose mission it is to add difficulty, challenges, and growth experiences to life. Contrast this to Christianity, which sees Satan as God's opponent. In Jewish thought, the idea that there exists anything capable of setting itself up as God's opponent would be considered overly polytheistic—you are setting up the devil to be a god or demigod.
my sense of the jewish sense of SATAN----is not a conscious being---the word is a kind of personification of a force of nature----
a negative force on the actions and fortunes----specifically, on PEOPLE. In jewish thought G-d can create humanoids that represent natural forces for some purposes of His own.. -----of course---getting down---and further down----and down down down
in astrophysics-------all of the universe is insubstantial------VIBRATIONS (I don't really understand any of this stuff)
the word is a kind of personification of a force of nature----
Agreed, the point is satan isn't a separate entity as the christians see it in their polytheistic religion . If Hashem is one and All, how can there anything be out side