In article , lsenders{at}hotmail.com
says...

>Matthew Johnson wrote:
>> In article ,
>lsenders{at}hotmail.com
>>
>> >>
>> >Again, one must distinquish between his earlier work and his later
>> >work.
>>
>> But you yourself consistently REFUSE to do this. Haven't you
>> even looked at the date yet for the work of his I consistently
>> quote? It was written during the
>> last 4 years of his life. I ahve NOT confused his earlier opinions.
>>
>Okay, now keep this thought in mind.  . . .

It was never absent from my mind. But clearly you do not grasp it yet.

>>  I am talking about a view clearly enunciated in his _later_
>> writings, written within the last four years of his life.
>> Stop throwing up elaborate smoke-screens. You are not very good at
>it.
>>
>later writtings.  Okay.  Now hold that thought.  Later writings more
>clearly reveal a greater separation from Greek thought.

What? Who told you this? And what "Greek thought" do you really
mean, anyway?
You do NOT have a good track record for showing the ability to tell the
difference between the thought of the Cappadocians and that of the
"Greeks".

>But if he is
>separating himself more and more from the Greek thought forms, what is
>he now advocating as the criteron of truth?

A misleading question. Perhaps it would be less misleading, if you knew what
"Greek thought" really meant, instead of using it as a catch-all
phrase for what
you neither understand nor accept.

>> >The whole point is that even Augustinian theology has a depth of
>> >weakness which was not expunged from Christian theological
>>>presuppositional thinking until the Reformation pinned the ears back on
>> >the Latin (and Eastern) Churches as to the depravity of man as taught
>> >sola scriptura.
>>
>> But this NEVER happened! What the 'Reformation' pinned on the
>> CHurch was neo-manicheanism, NOT CHristianity at all!

>Interesting analysis. But to conclude such you have to use early
>Augustinian logic not that of his later work.

Nonsense. Where _do_ you get these pieces of nonsense?

>> >This is why the EOC is like the RCC in that it
>> >presupposes man's autonomy and authority.
>>
>> No, that is not why. The EOC and RCC are NOT identical on this issue,
>but the
>> very great similarity is because even the RCC understands our common
>heritage
>> better than you do.
>>
>Like the RCC, the EOC views everything as "process."

Such ignorance! Of _course_ we do not. Anyone who has read even the most
elementary introductions to EOC theology know how WRONG you are here!

But you have never done this, have you? You are still running away from reading
Lossky, clinging to your security blanket of Clendenin.

> In so doing, it limits God.

That is your sin, not ours. It is _you_, not us, who "limit God".
For you limit
Him by denying that He did create creatures will free will.

> It limits both His knowledge and His providence.  It does
>so by its equivocation concerning the will of man.

The 'equivocation' is yours, as is so _clearly_ shown by your weak excuses for
_refusing_ to believe the Word of God when it says:

   who desires all men to be saved and to come to the
   knowledge of the truth.  (1Ti 2:4 RSVA)


>This is also why it
>will not bend the knee to not only the finality of the crucifixion of
>Christ, to the finality of the justification of the believer, the
>finality of the glorification of the believer, but also the finality of
>Christ's scripturalization of revelation.

All of this is more of your fiction.

> Both compromise the biblical
>doctrine of creation with its presupposition of the analogy of being.

What was _this_ gibberish supposed to mean?

>Both hold that man exists between pure actuality and pure potentiality
>of being.

Now it is _you_ who is getting yourself lost in "Greek thought".
Or did you not
realize that this distinction between "pure actuality" and
"pure potentiality"
is _straight_ from Aristotelian metaphysics?

> There, therefore, a continuity of being between man and God.
> Man may increase in his participation of God as a pure act.  It is
>synthetical thinking, not the biblical mandate of anathetical thinking.
>
>
>Like the Romanist, there is a synthesis between the Aristotelian idea
>of analogy of being

WHAT "idea of analogy of being"? That does not sound Aristotelian at ALL!


[tedious delusional pseudo-scholarship snipped]

>As opposed to his earlier work, Augustine comes to a mature, though not
>complete, realization that the natural was designed for the miraculous
>redemptive work _in_one_plan.  It is God who is in control of ALL
>things, including events.  Man is not autonomous. 

Again, you run to you favorite false dichotomy, your favorite "straw man"

> Man is not so free
>that he can, via his supposed "human uplift society" bring himself
>closer to God, either individually or corporately.

Are you so in love with straw-men? OR have you forgotten who you are debating
with? I never even _mentioned_ "uplifting human society".

> Based upon human
>autonomy, the Church slips from the City of God back into the City of
>the World.

You _still_ haven't read chapter 24, have you?

>Emphasizing the free-will of man independent of the
>sovereign control of God is to replace the doctrine of freedom "in
>Christ" with the doctrine of freedom without Christ.

Yes, this is the evidence that you still haven' tread chapter 24. For it betrays
very serious confusion Augustine warns us against so effectively there.

>  To refuse sola
>scriptura is lead the church back into the hopeless morass of
>non-biblical speculation, back into the thought forms of early
>Augustinianism.

Nonsense. You keep repeating this because it is so pleasing to you, but you
never give any proof, you only give rambling irrelevant read herrings.

>> > "in that day you shall surely die," meant, in
effect, that when man
>> >sinned, he committed suicide.
>>
>> But Adam kept on living. So you are still missing the point of this
>verse.
>>
>Man died spiritually and died physically.

No.

[snip]


-- 
---------------------------
Subudcat se sibi ut haereat Deo
quidquid boni habet, tribuat illi a quo factus est.
(St. Augustine, Ser. 96)

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