Josiah Concept Ministries

Defending the Faith Against Its Detractors

Archive for September, 2006

Pope and Muslims

Posted by Cory Tucholski on September 27, 2006

Yesterday, during my training class, I read an article that said Pope Benedict XVI had a meeting with Muslim representatives to talk about their faiths. The Pope said that “our future” depends on good relations between Christians and Muslims.

I know that Catholics from Jimmy Akin’s blog (where I comment from time to time) read my blog, and I would like to know if anyone knows the justification behind P841 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.

If any Catholics, more learned than I, can shed some light on this, I’d really appreciate it. Leave a comment or e-mail me. I know the Church teaches no salvation apart from Christ and the Church, so I’d be truly interested to know what this paragraph means in that light. Taken alone, it would seem that the Catholics believe that Muslims are saved.

Here’s the article:
B16 Tells Envoys of Respect for Islam

Posted in Papacy, Roman Catholicism | Leave a Comment »

Open Theism and Other Updates

Posted by Cory Tucholski on September 20, 2006

I have officially renounced Open Theism as my philosophy of choice. I ignored the usual objections to Open Theism because I thought that these stemmed from a lack of truly understanding the philosophy. The philosophy, in my opinion, doesn’t rob God of any of His omniscience; on the contrary, it made His omniscience all the more powerful by giving Him the ability to see that which Might Be, not just that which Is.

Open Theism supposes that God knows everything that can be known about the future, not everything there is to know. The actual act of making a free choice on our part is what makes the event present, or real. God doesn’t know what actual choice we are going to make until it happens, but He knows all of the choices that we will consider and is ready for each one. He knows the ramifications of each choice in relationship to the ramifications of the choices faced by everyone in the world in relationship to what is definately going to happen no matter what anyone decides.

Complicated. Find a better explanation and essays here if you want to better understand the philosophy.

It’s much simpler to assume that, since God intimately knows our hearts, that He already knows what we will decide once faced with the choice. I hated this because it seemed to me, then, that the future was written. But, J.P. Holding, webmaster of Tekton Apologetics Ministries, made a statement regarding Open Theism that set my mind at ease. “Just because God knows that we will decide X doesn’t mean we must decide X. It only means that we will.” Profoundly simple! The choice is still ours! But God knows that we will make it because of how well He knows our hearts.

That settles my mind. Orthodox Theism for me all the way! God is still sovereign. He didn’t write the future ahead of time, He knows it because He loves us so much that He knows our hearts better than we do–down to the last word I will type in this blog entry. Which is funny, since I don’t even yet know what that word will be!

God is truly awesome and I pray that He will build from this blog the ministry that He wants.

I plan to work tomorrow on getting an official web address. Microsoft is, apparently, having trouble with the Live Beta tests. Live Mail was terrible–I went back to using Hotmail. It was far less buggy, and I should be able to send hyperlinks and file attachments again! The arrow keys should work to navigate the text on the screen instead of having to use mouse clicks only!

If that works out, then I should be able to get some personal information up. My Bio, and What is the Josiah Concept? should be up Thursday or Friday. I’m going to hold off on putting up a Statement of Faith until I manage to work through Systematic Theology, and before I can work through it, I have to first obtain it. So that may be a while. Alternatively, I could just put a simplified one up and refine it later. Especially if it seems as though I may be waiting a while to get Systematic Theology or if other projects intervene (as they almost always seem to).

And the last word of this blog is “Sasquatch.” (Betcha didn’t see that coming–but God did!)

Refutations of Open Theism

I would also like to blog on an article my wife sent me some time ago, about a Catholic Rent-a-Priest website found here. From my initial perusal of the site, they shouldn’t even bother calling themselves Catholic, let alone Christian. It would be interesting to learn more about this organization.

Time, time, oh how I don’t have enough of you! If only I got paid to do this; then I would have more time. Anyone interested in donating some money so that I can make this ministry full time? E-mail me. SASQUATCH!!

Posted in Open Theism, Site News | Leave a Comment »

Tom Cruise: Taking Back His Image

Posted by Cory Tucholski on September 8, 2006

In a recent article from Religion News Blog about gossip columnists, bloggers, and website users discussing the recent first public appearence of Suri Cruise, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s daughter, Elaine Lui (of laineygossip.com) made a comment that really bothered me:

[T]here’s one absolute necessity if Cruise is to completely rehabilitate his image: he has to stop talking publicly about Scientology.

“We are all religious and we don’t push it on other people, and the way he did it was really offensive to other people. As long as he doesn’t talk about it, he’s going to be fine.”

Again, I have to state in no uncertain terms, that I disagree with Scientology very strongly. The beliefs of this so-called “religion” are completely at odds with a Christian understanding of the world around us. With that in mind, you would think that I am someone who would agree with Lui about what was said here. That is not the case.

I am categorically opposed to Elaine Lui’s above comment.

Although I disagree with Scientology and I pray that Tom Cruise sees God’s truth someday, to oppose him proselytizing his religion begs the question “Where will it end?” If I became a celebrity tomorrow, I wouldn’t be shy about declaring that my celebrity status is not for me, but for the glory of God. I would ask the faithful to pray for me to keep Him in my sight, and that I do His will through my newfound fame. Would Elaine Lui speak out against that?

I sincerely hope that I am reading too much into Lui’s comment. Somehow, I doubt it. No one seems to want to hear about the religious views of another; and I read this as an attack on not just Scientology, but on evangelism in general.

The United States gives its citizens “freedom of speech.” Not “freedom of speech so long as you don’t offend me.” Unfortunately, all too many people assume that the latter is implied by the Constitution. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade or so, and weather or not the Political Correctness movement is going to effectively end a lot of our free speech rights.

Posted in Scientology | Leave a Comment »