The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Two souls for one person?

Smithca,<br><br>I ran out of time to finish my last post. I hope you will consider these additional thoughts.<br><br>1) Your desire to account for "all situations"--and I will take your scaled-down definition of it--in this issue has involved attempting to account for degrees of "abnormality" produced by variable combinations of numbers of fertilized eggs and resultant individuals. What you [color:blue]must</font color=blue> account for at the outset, however, is that the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible is able to create men and women in His image IN ANY WAY HE SO DESIRES, and IN WAYS HE ALONE UNDERSTANDS. That is a profound "situation" indeed, for which you have shown no inclination to account.<br><br>2) A side-note about: [color:red]I would not normally use the term belong because of the image of slavery.</font color=red><br>Does this mean you also avoid talking about:<br><br>the Father, because of bad fathers? Christ as Bridegroom, because of bad husbands? as Advocate, because of bad attorneys? as Lamb of God, because of stupid sheep? <br><br>Most of the men in my Heidelberg Catechism class are normally African-American. They know I will use Biblical language about "belonging", and normally several thank me for reconnecting them to this vital truth rather than shying away from it. I explain that the American slavery experience was uniquely perverted by theological issues which should have been settled by the churches in a disciplinary fashion, and overwhelmingly were not. Chief among those issues was the "enlightenment"-spawned questioning--in full disregard to the Scriptures--of whether the slaves were even fully human: "Do they really have souls?" (Hmm, sounds familiar.) But we cannot escape the fact that God owns us, and can do what He will with us.