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Significance of the Virgin Birth

1. Sinlessness of Christ. The sinful nature was absent from His human nature. 2. Divinity. The Virgin Birth made Incarnation possible or else He'd have been a mere human. 3. Uniqueness. Not as Hercules, having 2 fathers, on divine, one human. 4. Miraculous. The supernaturalness of the event. Not natural. 5. One Person. 2 Natures but one person. If born of a human father and mother then a new person (dual personality is contradictory) 6. Divine Act. Prophesied beforehand by Isaiah.

Can We Trust the Bible?

I am convinced that we can trust the Bible: trust it as the true revelation of God. The pluralism of “revelations” calls for the exercise of the law of non-contradiction. The modern relativistic, pluralistic mood looks at the Bible as another “truth”. But the fact is that there can never be an absolute infrastructure for relative truth. They always differ in their infrastructure though the superstructure might appear to be the same. The trustworthiness of the Bible is a very important issue, since it addresses issues of ultimate concern: Theology, Cosmology, and Teleology (purpose, salvation). And it supercedingly differs from other “revelatory” sources. Either the Bible is true or false; it is either trustworthy or non-trustworthy. How do we know if we can trust the Bible, then? The Philosophical Test of Internal Consistency. In depth study shows that the Bible is never self-contradictory or self-defeating. As a matter of fact, though the books of the Bible were written over a time ...

A Basis For Depending On Scripture (Seminary Papers)

MDiv, CITS, Sept 11, 2000 THOUGH there may be a way of depending on the Scripture (i.e., the Bible) without any adherence to or trust in its content (e.g. one may depend on the Bible for knowledge concerning what the early Christians believed and how they behaved, etc), dependence on Scripture, here, means dependence on the infallibility of and the reliability of Scriptural truth—and so to live life on the basis of what the Bible says concerning life. I contend, then, that the true basis of depending on the Scripture is the real fulfillment of the ultimate existential necessity of life in experience. It is not what can be known by experience or reason that the Bible is depended for, but more for what it says concerning the unknown – concerning the Infinite, the origin and destiny of man and the cosmos, the significance of life, etc. The Bible, then, is a revelation – and this is generally accepted as a fact. Thus, the accounts of history and other writings are not mere accounts but a r...

DEMOCRACY AND ETHICS

© Domenic Marbaniang, 1999. India is a democratic country; and by that we mean it is governed by us, its people [“democracy”, from the Greek democratia: demos, people, and kratia , government or rule]. Ethics refers to the study of moral conduct, of “what one ought to do”. Our nation recognizes the ideals of Justice, liberty, Equality, and Fraternity in its constitution. With the complexity of religious beliefs, its diversities, secularistic views, and the influence of the media ethical decisions are becoming more and more difficult in our society. The film producer defends his stance of overloading his film with sex as right, while a religious or even a secular man opposes it as morally depraving and detrimental to society. The advertisement agencies technically propagate lies deluding people to believe something which is not true. Our nation has found itself in a closet of ethical relativism – subjectivism and conventionalism. Variant religions assume their own moral standards. The W...