The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying In the Crucible with Christ in the SSnet.org series Lesson 4, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart. 

The Topic today is: "Turned into His image fully by following or imitating Him"

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God"

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on page 45 and for the laymen edition or Standard Edition, on page 31. (Sunday part)

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

---Paul says today in Romans 8:29 that Christ in eternity foreknew all believers and predestined [allow them to become potentially or de iure in those periods in eternity] to become conformed into His image of Christ and when He came He was the firstborn human with the same image perfectly produced in His life by obedience and sinlessness so that He might be the example of those bretheren following Him. This reality in our lives is de iure at Justification but has to become now de facto in Sanctification. At least that is what our Pioneers and Ellen White in True Adventistm taught in all their works. It is biblical that is why they followed it. 

---Adventist scholar H. K. LaRondelle in his Perfection made the distinction between imago dei "image of God" and imitatio dei "imitating God". Psalm 1 explains the halak or walking of the Faithful following in the way after Him wholeheartedly in fellowship with God.

---LaRondelle says that God will make you walk erect or upright. God shows the way and is Navigator on this way. Scholar Mowinckel said that Torah comes from horah and means show way (LaRondelle page 101).

---Deuteronomy 18:13 and 6:4 expects spiritual Israel to be perfect "You shall be blameless [tamim]". This command to be obedient to the point of been blameless was given to Adam, Henoch, Noch, Abraham and Moses. See Genesis 6:9 Noah walked with God and Genesis 17:1 "be blameless or tamim".

---The Fall of Adam marred the imago dei or image of God in us, says LaRondelle in Perfection discussing the curses of Genesis 3:17, Curses of Genesis 4:11, Curses of Genesis 9:25 and the Mediator blessing of Genesis 12:3b and Genesis 18:7 as solution.

---What does restoration of image in us means? LaRondelle in Perfection says to be free from the power of sin according to Deuteronomy 30:6, 14. Secondly, to have the law of God written upon the heart according ot Jeremiah 32:39. This will make you walk "erect" says Leviticus 26:12-13.

---Christ walked like this perfectly and sinlessly (Hebrews 4:15). We are to imitate Christ by walking erect and blameless after him.

---But can we? John Wesley said yes but tongue in the cheek admitted some sin still remaining.

---Luther said we can follow Christ and must but we have original sin in us [borrowed from Augustine] that was inherited from Adam in our genes and thus cannot be totally perfect.

---Karl Barth came and wanted to rewrite Luther's theology. He read Martin Hegel, Plotinus, Plato, Aristotle, Luther, Rudolph Bultmann [whom he disagrees with], the Old Testament and philosophy and invented his own slant on salvation and sin.

---We are called to be obedient and are free to choose to be obedient, says Barth, but, just like Luther, tongue in the cheek, he says that we are same time sinner and same time saint = simul iustus et peccatum. Luther said it, Barth accepted it and built it in his system. [see Wolf Krötke p. 67ff cited below]. See also pp. 88-89 of this work where Barth is cited. 

---Then Barth argued that if you say there is always until the Second Coming of Christ a simul iustus et peccatum as Luther says, then you are not totally free. Erasmus said that Christians are totally free. Barth sounds very confused and difficult when he explains the role of the will, sinlessness, overcoming and sin.

---He does not believe in a liberum arbitrium as Erasmus believed, but in a liberum servum. The will is not a will to decide but a will enslaved.

---Barth mathematically differed from Luther who says it is possible to be like Erasmus liberum arbitrium but Karl Barth, the modernist Lutheran said it is not possible because if you admit simul iustus et peccatum, a continuing sin in man until the Second Coming, then your will is not completely free but actually bound until the second coming.

---Sinners can then not be free from sin. Perfection is not de facto in us, only de iure in heaven.

---But this brings the command to be obedient in problem: if God asks obedience from man and they can't completely rendered it because of remaining sinfullness then how does Perfection work? The answer is for Barth that sinner remains sinner until the Second Coming even though he/she is a saint.

---That is Adventist scholar H. K. LaRondelle and George Knight's view because Karl Barth also influenced Gerrit Cornelius Berkhouwer who was Hans LaRondelle's teacher at Amsterdam and also the Ridderbosse, father and son who were also LaRondelle's teachers.

---It was a trend in the 1960-1970' to be Barthian = be influenced by the modernist ideas of Karl Barth.

---LaRondelle endorse Luther's simul iustus et peccator in Perfection footnote 430. As LaRondelle a Barthian Adventist?

---George Knight also cited Berkhouwer left right and center for his sin and salvation suggestions.

---Barth suggested instantaneous Justification and Sanctification. George Knight suggested the same.

---When Knight was divorced in 1967 as pastor, he left the church and became agnostic and learned by studies at Houston University how to cynical write about religious institutions and religious ideas that faithful people cherish and when he came back in 1977 to the Adventist church, he implemented those cynical ideas in his books.

---That is why Knight is reversing, just like Karl Barth, sanctification as a act of a moment and justification a work of a lifetime.

---Ellen White statement after statement encourages the Christian to grow weaker in sin to the point of no sin. They included the inherited habits of the past. Total overcoming is Ellen White's message which is not the same as Luther, not the same as even Wesley, not the same as Karl Barth, not the same as Schleiermacher and Bultmann, not the same as G. C. Berkhouwer, the Ridderbosse and not the same as the Adventist H. K. LaRondelle and George Knight.

---True Adventists should know that beautiful information are marred in LaRondelle and Knight with Barthian and Lutheran ideas of simul iustus et peccator/peccatum = same time just and same time sinner.

---Many Adventist pastors got their training under these men from Andrews University and are not aware of the problems involved and one can hear it in their preaching.

---There are two ways: First Way of Truth: follow the Bible and Ellen White or the Second Way of Confusion: follow Martin Luther and Karl Barth or G. Berkhouwer [reworked Barthian] or H. K. LaRondelle [reworked Barthian, through Ridderbosse and Berkhouwer] or George Knight [reworked LaRondelle and Berkhouwer]. 

---J. Blincoe was a Dean of Andrews University at our Seminary there. He wrote his doctoral dissertation comparing Ellen White and Karl Barth on Creation. A very thick dissertation. Done in the early 1970;s. Where Barth wrote long paragraphs to make his point, Ellen White said the same point in a few sentences.

---Karl Barth argued that the Old Testament was not continued in the New Testament but that one has to read the Old Testament through the lenses of the New Testament. Ellen White applied that principle throughout all of her works. The Bible speaks throughout itself because it is God's Word and all the Words as His Revelation.

Source: Wolf Krötke, Sin and Nothingness in the Theology of Karl Barth. Translated by P. G. Ziegler and C-M. Bammel (Princeton Theological Seminary, originally in German in 1983 and this translation is in 2005). Downloaded from the internet  on the 15th of July 2022 at https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/studiesinreforme10prin