Eustace made a step toward Caspian with both hands held out, but then drew back with a startled expression.

"Look here I say. It's all very well but aren't you -- I mean didn't you....?

"Oh don't be such an ass," said Caspian.

"But hasn't he, er, died?" Eustace asked, looking at Aslan.

"Yes," said the Lion, in a very quiet voice (almost, Jill thought, as if he were laughing). "He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have. There are very few who haven't."

-- Dialogue from The Silver Chair

I am persuaded that much of the ostensibly doctrinal divides in Christendom are merely ethnic and national expressions of Christianity which have ossified into denominations or national churches.

This is not to understate the very real and often dangerous doctrinal errors which abound. Nor is it an endorsement or relativization of all these expressions.

If I have to look at one more thumbnail of trent horn's anti-Sola Scriptura videos where he's making an "I have to poop" face, I'm going to drink myself into a stupor.

We can pray for Pope Francis as a rebellious and sinful man -- pray that he repents before his last breath.

We can also pray that Rome is reformed in a more conservative and biblically faithful direction even if she doesn't fully repent.

This is part of praying for our enemies.

People bemoaning the lower deportation numbers under Trump vs Biden have a very legitimate point.

However, most deportations occur via apprehensions at the border. Since border crossings are down to near zero, of course deportations will be lower.

This highlights the main issue: deporting migrants already here will take more strategic steps.

1) Use volunteers to aid deportations
2) Stop remittances by either taxation or banking regulations
3) Cut off all Federal funding to state and local gov'ts which give benefits to illegals

If you sell all your belongings and use the cash to buy drugs, the GDP goes up. This is what Capitalism does to entire nations.
✠

A blessed Quadragesima Sunday to all (first Sunday in Lent). Our Savior's death and resurrection approaches.

GDP is one of the fakest and gayest metrics ever invented. It all centers on the idea that the creation of value can be measured by what is spent on it. This subjective theory of value is highly flawed, as is the classic and stale C + I + G + M - X formula.

https://youtu.be/ZSUbtfXY24c?si=MqS2wGWrHVpAzX8K

YOU CAN JUST DO THINGS

Of course I believe in women's rights. They have the right to remain silent.

We, too, acknowledge that the use of Baptism is necessary--that no one may omit it from either neglect or contempt. In this way we by no means make it free [that is, optional]. And not only do we strictly bind the faithful to the observance of it, but we also maintain that it is the ordinary instrument of God in washing and renewing us; in short, in communicating to us salvation. The only exception we make is, that the hand of God must not be tied down to the instrument. He may of himself accomplish salvation. For when an opportunity for Baptism is wanting, the promise of God alone is amply sufficient.

-- John Calvin, Antidote to the Council of Trent, 7.5

Feliz cumpleaños a ICE!!! 22 years of serving the American people today!

> Be me
> Be the most loved English Bible for centuries
> Legacy forgotten today
> Contain epicly based notes
> Be preferred version of Puritans
> Be the mandated Bible of Scotland
> Be translated under the influence of Knox, Calvin, and Coverdale
> Be the first English Bible to be read in the New World
> Get banned by papist simps
> Be the Geneva Bible
> Pic unrelated

The Socinian objection that vicarious atonement is unmerciful because it involves the full and strict satisfaction of justice has no force from a trinitarian point of view. It is valid only from a Unitarian position. If the Son of God who suffers in the sinner's stead is not God but a creature, then of course God makes no self-sacrifice in saving man through vicarious atonement. In this case, it is not God the offended party who makes the atonement. The trinitarian holds that the Son of God is true and very God and that when he voluntarily becomes the sinner's substitute for atoning purposes, it is very God himself who satisfies God's justice. The penalty is not inflicted upon a mere creature whom God made from nothing and who is one of countless millions; but it is inflicted upon the incarnate Creator himself.

The following extract from Channing (Unitarian Christianity) illustrates this misconception: "Unitarianism will not listen for a moment to the common errors by which this bright attribute of mercy is obscured. It will not hear of a vindictive wrath in God which must be quenched by blood or of a justice which binds his mercy with an iron chain, until its demands are satisfied to the full. It will not hear that God needs any foreign influence to awaken his mercy." The finger must be placed upon this word foreign.

The trinitarian does not concede that the influence of Jesus Christ upon God's justice is an influence "foreign" to God. The propitiating and reconciling influence of Jesus Christ, according to the trinitarian, emanates from the depths of the Godhead; this suffering is the suffering of one of the divine persons incarnate.

God is not propitiated (1 John 2:2; 4:10) by another being, when he is propitiated by the only begotten Son. The term foreign in the above extract is properly applicable only upon the Unitarian theory, that the Son of God is not God, but a being like man or angel alien to the divine essence.

This fallacy is still more apparent in the following illustration from the same writer: "Suppose that a creditor, through compassion to certain debtors, should persuade a benevolent and opulent man to pay in their stead? Would not the debtors see a greater mercy and feel a weightier obligation, if they were to receive a free gratuitous release?" (Unitarian Christianity).

Here, the creditor and the debtors' substitute are entirely different parties. The creditor himself makes not the slightest self-sacrifice in the transaction, because he and the substitute are not one being, but two. Consequently, the sacrifice involved in the payment of the debt is confined wholly to the substitute. The creditor has no share in it. But if the creditor and the substitute were one and the same being, then the pecuniary loss incurred by the vicarious payment of the debt would be a common loss.

Upon the Unitarian theory, God the Father and Jesus Christ are two beings as different from each other as two individual men. If this be the fact, then indeed vicarious atonement implies no mercy in God the Father. The mercy would lie wholly in Jesus Christ, because the self-sacrifice would be wholly in him. But if the trinitarian theory is the truth, and God the Father and Jesus Christ are two persons of one substance, being, and glory, then, the self-sacrifice that is made by Jesus Christ is not confined to him alone, but is a real self-sacrifice both on the part of God the Father and also of the entire Trinity. This is taught in Scripture: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16); "he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Rom. 8:32); "God commends his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (5:8).

For the Reformed Sanhedrin who object against Lent, St. Bullinger in the 2nd Helvetic Confession wrote:

The fast of Lent is attested by antiquity but not at all in the writings of the apostles. Therefore it ought not, and cannot, be imposed on the faithful. It is certain that formerly there were various forms and customs of fasting... Socrates, the historian, says: "Because no ancient text is found concerning this matter, I think the apostles left this to every man's own judgment, that every one might do what is good without
fear or constraint" (Hist. eccles. V.22, 40).

The Reformed position is merely against binding the conscience to rituals not explicitly commanded in Scripture, not that such practices are not good, appropriate, godly, and beneficial.