Maggie's Farm

What's more, this theory puts acts in the forefront - I become an agent in a matrix I can't possibly understand but that still represent my choice per the heaven vs hell dynamic. If not, then my purported faith - without an explanation of its eternal merit - takes over and to the same effect.

The entire salvation matrix is fraught with human determinism, and it is so at the same time it's demoted G-d to being hung on Its own morality, a blow to grace at the least.

All this makes man too powerful at the same time as most Christians (in my experience, at least) become too casual or too easily led into the wonderful world of their own beliefs, as if childlike ignorance is a virtue.

It's an odd way to build a structure. I've yet to meet a Christian who can answer what exactly saves him. If anything. That's not a criticism; it's just a simple conundrum.

And your theological rigor is perfectly suited to look down your nose at philosophical questions. Philosophical questions that haven't ever been part of the canon because of its force of consensus, whether catechismic, political, or through the simple momentums of time.

That's the thing about theology: It's never spelled the same as philosophy, is it. This is for a reason, the same reason that simple theological assertions that can't rise to the level of thought always come off as superior and empty (or as Oldblood observes, angry.). All that's an interesting defense against an unanswered question, isn't it?

To paraphrase, your theology is evidently seriously inept. And I'm sure you've been told about salvation - since you felt entitled to the unmitigated gall and unbridled ignorance to rhetorically excommunicate a complete stranger over it, whatever it is - and now you think so little of it that you can't explain it in the very context you were instructed by your Savior to. Contexts exactly like this one.

It could be the main difference between us is I have an inkling what Jesus was on about...

...and before you continue, I invite you to deliver a usable theory of the supernatural on Earth:

A second net of fish (John 21:1-12)
Calming a storm (Mark 4:35-41; Matthew 8:18-27; Luke 8:22-25)
Casting demons out of a lunatic boy (Mark 9:14-29; Matthew 17:14-21; Luke 9:37-42)
Casting out a dumb and blind spirit (Luke 11:14-26; Matthew 12:22-32; Mark 3:22-30)
Casting out a spirit (Matthew 9:32-34)
Cleansing a leper (Mark 1:40-45; Matthew 8:1-4)
Cleansing of ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19)
Cursing the fig tree (Mark 11:12-26)
Delivering a man in the synagogue from demonic spirits (Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37)
Delivering the Syrophoenician's daughter (Matthew 15:21-28)
Feeding 5,000 with five loaves and two fish (John 6:1-14; Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:32-44; Luke 9:10-17)
Feeding another 4,000-plus (Mark 8:1-10; Matthew 15:32)
Healing a deaf and dumb man (Mark 7:31-37)
Healing a man born blind (John 9:1-41)
Healing a man possessed by demons at Gadara (Mark 5:1-20; Matthew 8:28; Luke 8:26)
Healing a man with a withered hand (Luke 6:6-11; Matthew 12:9-13; Mark 3:1-5)
Healing a man with dropsy (or edema) (Luke 14:1-6)
Healing a paralytic (Mark 2:1-12; Matthew 9:2-8; Luke 5:17-26)
Healing a woman with an 18-year infirmity (Luke 13:10-17)
Healing a woman with an issue of blood (Mark 5:25-34; Matthew 9:18-26; Luke 8:40-56)
Healing blind Bartimeaus (Mark 10:46-52)
Healing of a nobleman's son (John 4:46-54)
Healing of Malchus' ear (Luke 22:49-51)
Healing of the man at Bethesda (John 5:1-15)
Healing of two blind men (Matthew 9:27-31
Healing Peter's mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38-39; Matthew 8:14-15)
Healing the blind man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26)
Healing the Centurion's servant (Luke 7: 1-10; Matthew 8:5-13)
Pulling a coin from the mouth of a fish (Matthew 17:24-27)
Raising Jairus' daughter (Mark 5:21-43)
Raising Lazarus (John 11:1-46)
Raising the widow's son (Luke 7:11-16)
The first of two nets of fish and the calling of His first disciples (Luke 5:1-11)
Turning water into wine (John 2:1-11)
Walking on water (Matthew 14:22-33; John 6:15-21; Mark 6:45-52)

Source.

Rich young man raised from the dead Secret Gospel of Mark 1
Water controlled and purified Infancy Thomas 2.2
Made birds of clay and brought them to life Infancy Thomas 2.3
Resurrected dead playmate Zeno Infancy Thomas 9
Healed a woodcutter's foot Infancy Thomas 10
Held water in his cloak Infancy Thomas 11
Harvested 100 bushels of wheat from a single seed Infancy Thomas 12
Stretched a board that was short for carpentry Infancy Thomas 13
Resurrected a teacher he earlier struck down Infancy Thomas 14-15
Healed James' viper bite Infancy Thomas 16
Resurrected a dead child Infancy Thomas 17
Resurrected a dead man Infancy Thomas 18
Miraculous Virgin Birth verified by midwife Infancy James 19-20

Christ is seen descending from heaven 3 Nephi 11:8-10
Christ heals the sick, lame, blind, halt, maimed, leprous and deaf 3 Nephi 17:7
Christ gathers the children and then opens the heavens and angels descend encircling the children 3 Nephi 17:23-24
Christ created bread and wine for all to partake of 3 Nephi 20:3-7
Christ loosed tongues of children who speak great and marvelous things 3 Nephi 26:14
Christ heals sick, lame, blind, deaf and raises man from the dead 3 Nephi 26:15

Source.

Unless this is all either myth or sideshow, I'd say the "orthodox Christian" theology has a sticky problem of cause, intent, motive, effect, and stuff like that to untangle. You know, a working philosophy of what it all means and why it exists as such.

Assuming one can raise such questions to the authority and lengthy record of officialdom.

Now, given that my take on it is presumably again laughable, I'll only offer only that I doubt none of it. I happen to think it's literal. I just want to know why it was a course of action at the time, what was the source or power - what was the cause and for what purpose; and no, "G-d" is by nature a rhetorical construct, - and especially, where it fits this orthodoxy we find so over-ridingly important.