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