>This discussion was about unconditional love....[edit]...Thus you have not been discussing unconditional love.
The discussion was not about unconditional love. I never even mentioned the word. I also think it is a concept foreign to the Bible. God loves with an everlasting love and His love is unfailing, but never does the Bible say that God's love is unconditional. I thought we were talking about love and what true love is. You kept bringing up the uncondtional thing and I said that it is not love to turn aside evil and ignore injustice. (I'll tell you what, how about you answer this question and we will go from there.' If I murder you, is that loving you?. Go ahead and answer that and we can move on to God's love next. I just want to codify man's definition of love first. How can we try and tackle the concept of God's love if we cannot agree on man's love first? Sound good?)
John9:2,3 Jesus healing the man born blind, and the disciples asking him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" They thought his blindness was a result of sin. They thought it could have been a result of his his own sin. If so, the sin would have nessesarily preceded his birth, at which time the results of the sin ie blindness was apparent, so sin would have been commited, in their opinion, either in the womb or before conception - you decide.
I'll tell you what SS, I will even grant you this one. Let's say that the disciples did believe in reincarnation, that is different however from the Bible teaching reincarnation. Jesus never gives an affirmative that their supposed reincarnation view was correct. Instead, he replies with 'neither'. Now if you are going to argue that his silence makes it a possibility, let me give you this analogy. Let's say I were to ask you, 'SS, do you hang out on this MB because you are a homosexual, or because you hate exJw's?' and your answer was 'neither, it is because I used to be a JW that I enjoy this MB'. Would your silence then make my assertion true? That you are a homosexual? No, it would only mean that I gave you a faulty dilemma and you are neither of the things I mentioned. In the same way was the question proposed to Jesus. And as far as the John the Baptist/Elijah thing goes, I think it's a total stretch and if you want the Bible to teach reincarnation, you will have to have a myriad more examples than just a few stray ones that are ambiguous at best.
>You have the catholic church to thank for the absence of reincarnation in the christian corpus.
Really!? What if you are looking at it the wrong way. What if the Bible never taught reincarnation and these false teachings were creeping into the church (which 26 of the 27 books of the NT warn about) and let's just say that in the 5th gen council it was established as heresy to keep the church from false teaching. Isn't that another way to look at it? Is it possible that the Bible doesn't teach reincarnatrion and that the church put it in the heresy category (and rightfully so) to keep others from being misled?
>Heb 9:27 Just as man is destined to die once' Didn't lazarus and all the other resurectees die twice?
Yes Lazarus was raised again, so was the widow's son in 1 Kings. Enoch never died and Elijah never died either. Hebrews said that it is appointed for man to die one and then judgement. First of all, this kind of strips away the reincarnation argument. Secondly, it is the rule, not the exception. Mankind will die and face judgement, it is a fact. God kept two men from death and another few He let live a little longer. That does not negate the fact that there will be a judgement. It just means that God chose to deal with a few exceptions in a different manner. Don't worry, they will have to give an account also.
Thanks for the conversation. Looking forward to a response.
Penn