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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (34865)	3/30/2003 5:53:44 PM
From: MJ	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 39621

This message board reminds me of the hours our Virginia family (when I was much younger) spent in conversation about philosophy and religion. We were a Presbyterian family that left no subject untouched---Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Jesus Christ,existentialism the religions of the world----and yes predestination. Many hours were spent after Sunday services enjoying a fried chicken dinner with mash potatoes, fresh vegetables---fresh desserts etc. A Great Great Grandfather who fought in the Civil War, Grandparents who were devout Baptist and our Presbyterian family----the verbal spiring was invigorating. In the Presbyterian Church, predestination was hotly debated---some divisions have occurred and now predestination is not considered a part of the doctrine of some of the Presbyterian Churches. (This an over simplification.) In our family we never came to any definitive concensus----each learning from the other---and each as Jefferson did studying and developing their individual philosophies and views of religion. As a Presbyterian, I am intrigued with Jefferson's comments on the Presbyterians of that time who obviously wanted to influence politics---and did. What I find particularly intriguing is that the very democratic Parliamentary form of government used in the Presbyterian Church became in part the model for our own USA government. Here I share with you one of my favorite quotes by Jefferson. Jefferson would have loved the internet and likely had a computer sitting in his library overlooking the mountains. From Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, p. 42,a quote from a letter to Isaac McPherson, August 123, 1813, an inventor from Baltimore, Md. "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation." mj

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (34865)	4/1/2003 2:03:08 PM
From: Jamey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39621

2Mars, the enclosed quote (by Jefferson?) from your post imo, sums up his beliefs in the works doctrines of the Jews and their rigid, impossible laws. "It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it, etc." But Christ said the laws were good, in that they served to make man realize the hopelessness of depending upon their works to save them. Yes, Paul,s dependence upon spiritual things were well founded in his exemplary life that shows the character of one who served Christ as a faithful servant. Jefferson's belief that he must store up good works to gain the acceptance of God is typical of many today, to their detriment. James