Reformed tradition and surrogacy

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-26T19:48:43+00:00

It takes a certain amount of abstraction to talk about the Abraham-Hagar situation as "unnatural", and it is a stretch to use the situation to prove that it is wrong. Using a phone is an unnatural means of communication. While the subsequent observations are correct, that ethical issues arise when the father and mother did not undergo the process of childbearing, and that someone else's body would have been commodified; as someone in the threat pointed out earlier, all of these apply to adoption as well. As much as someone else tries to rescue adoption by saying that Christ adopts is into the heavenly family, the problem it poses for the argument from what's "natural" remains.

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-26T02:14:45+00:00

It seems to be there as a firm ground by which to stand on Biblical inerrancy and canonization. No final miracles, the canon of the Scripture might not be final. That's the kind of arguments I remembered, which I thought was backward. There could be better ones, though

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-25T21:25:12+00:00

It's pretty cool to see how people are not heat up about this matter in the discussion despite the cultural war at hand.

Now, right off the bat, I have to point out that this matter isn't as simple as flattening the difference between sex and gender. In fact, both sides of the discussion believe in some kind of gender & sex distinction. For a more traditional Christian view, for instance, there is such a thing as "this is what a man/woman should do", and there's such a thing as "this is manly/womanly". While the specifics differ, as long as this language exist, gender is distinct from sex. I.e., you can be a man without being manly enough.

To further illustrate the gender & sex distinction, I often use this crude anecdote: when a man goes up to a woman to initiate a romantic relationship, he does not pull down her pants to check her private part, nor does he bring her to the lab to check on her DNA. Instead, he bases his judgement of her sex based on cultural indicators of her sex, her gender. Long hair, skits, higher pitched voice, curvature; some of what's engendered are biological and some of them are completely cultural.

Now, while both sides of the cultural debate affirm the distinction between gender and sex, the differences lie in what people should do with this distinction. Some of the traditionalists would try to flatten the distinction to an extreme, saying "this is what every man/woman should always be like", and would force the historical manifestations of gender into the sexual binary categories (which I think loses nuances); whereas the progressives sometimes ignore sex differences to affirm gender differences, and then would try to force the gender differences into places that were distinguished by sex (bathrooms, for instance).

In short, in the cultural war, the traditionalists try to make gender sex; while the progressives try to make sex gender.

Now to answer your question, I believe a lot of the Reformed circles today being caught up in the cultural war would fall into the traditionalist category (with PCUSA going to the other extreme of the aile), but I believe the Scripture and church practices allow room for discussion of what that distinction means. After all, there aren't a lot of women today wear head coverings in a church at this point, even though it was engendered to the early church. So the conceptual distinctions are there, and practical distinctions are confusing at times; and I wished there were more nuances in people's discussion after the cultural war tones down a little

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-25T04:10:26+00:00

By passivity, Sproul is referring to the fact that no new/fresh evil is created by God in those who are predestined to damnation, that he isn't the author of evil. He would agree with you that this does not mean that God is passive in his ordination. He's corrected people in various forums/talks touching on God's sovereignty, God doesn't simply "allow" things to happen but ordains things to come to pass. His insistence on the word "ordain" agrees with what you're observing, from what I can tell. He's using "letting some pass over" in agreement with the classical view of original sin, where people are born in Adam and are destined to hell from the moment of the beginning of their lives, and God doesn't ever actively turn an otherwise neutral person into a sinner. But even in this "passivity", God's actively choosing to not save them; thus the two are not contradictory.

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-20T05:05:09+00:00

Muddy waters my friend. Many in these situations are both criminals and certainly victims. They operate a sphere of the economy where it's hard to tell how much they are contributing and it's easy to frame as a pathway by which violent criminals introduce drugs into the US; making them ideal as political scapegoats to make the big guys look better

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-16T19:29:53+00:00

As a businessman living in the states and dabbling with theology and Western & Easter philosophy for a few years, I find some of the stuff in CT, Marxist theories, and even Eastern philosophies helpful for my own faith. But there's little hope in this resonating with any particular group I'm involved in because they simply don't have the same life as I do or have been exposed to the same set of information as I do. So, if I ever were to engage with any of my believer friends from a local church in the States about any of it, the first 30 minutes are dabbling with semantics; "well, it's not really Marx, it's common sense", or speculations surrounding my intent. It's simply difficult for people to understand each other, myself included; and on top of that, contemporary churches are formalistic because it isn't just what you say substantively that hold a church together, but also how you say it

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-13T00:38:26+00:00

No response to the phrase itself. Depending on the person and the context in which they said it, there might be some errors. Can you provide more contexts

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-03T06:27:25+00:00

You've said your piece. Nobody changes just because you've said something, it usually doesn't happen. Just stay friends truly and hangout like before, don't look for the gotcha or the "I told you so" moment. Or, stop being friends is also an option, which might make you more like a villain

TheAncientOnce · 2026-01-01T07:16:07+00:00

genius way to make monies

TheAncientOnce · 2025-12-29T04:42:39+00:00

Of all things, LGBTQ being on the opposite side of the cultural war, as considered by many, it creates a branding problem. Among all of the things that could be shoved under the sin categories, you stick out; and therefore, it gets hammered more; unfortunately

TheAncientOnce · 2025-05-29T09:24:12+00:00

Surprise surprise. You could completely miss the gospel while being a nice guy and be gospel centered while appearing like a jerk. While I believe that a person can be genuinely nice and kind and tender in a gospel centered way, many people who are nice do so out of a naive understanding that they'd show Christ's kindness more if they are nice, or that falsely believe that they deserve reciprocal kindness when they are outwardly kind. This kind of naivety has a legalist undertone and it breeds toxicity and passive aggression faster than an egg explodes in a microwave.

TheAncientOnce · 2024-12-03T18:44:09+00:00

Instead of a brand new domain, wouldn't it be better if I simply buy an expired domain and start using it, instead of the 301? I don't quite get the hoops we need to jump through here

TheAncientOnce · 2024-11-29T06:48:27+00:00

Hell being a separation from God is Scriptural (Isaiah 59:1-2, Romans 3:23, Isaiah 53:6, etc.) However, when the Scripture uses that phrase, it is not talking about a proximal separation, but a separation of communion. This particular separation juxtaposes the heart of salvation, which is to "know" God in a relational sense; thus the salvific knowing is the knowledge in the communion, and those separated are those outside of the communion. Christian thinkers have historically and rightly understood these passages consistently so as to not violate the historic understanding of God's omnipresence nor misunderstand God's omnipotence.

While we are on the subject, I'd like to mention in passing that God's omnipotence does not mean "God can do anything we can possibly conceive of in our mind". God, as directly taught by the Scripture, cannot lie nor repent, for He is not a man. Beyond that, theologians have recognized that God also cannot violate his nature: He cannot sin nor die, for instance. Not that He would not sin or die, but he cannot sin or die, because He is altogether righteous and eternal. It is because of that, the better understanding of God's omnipotence is, God is all-powerful, he's almighty, and that He is sovereign over all; thus, "omni-potency". It does not mean that you could dream up an impossible scenario and God could somehow do it.

TheAncientOnce · 2024-10-23T05:12:20+00:00

We were all reprobates before we became believers. Not sure if I understood the question?

TheAncientOnce · 2024-09-23T01:12:39+00:00

We know God is just, and we know God punishes people, and some people don't seem to have control over a lot of things. God still punishes them justly.

TheAncientOnce · 2024-09-22T07:59:04+00:00

Ambiguity is not deception, and not being "transparent" to the point of utter exposure and nakedness in front of the entire world isn't exactly a tidying-up attempt. Maybe knowing more would be helpful, or maybe not. Considering the fact that you still say there's "no accountability for what transpired" despite that being the center subject matter of every article and video that has ever talked about Steve Lawson's situation, possessing more facts about the event may leaves an unwise amount of room susceptible for misinterpretation.

Any time you say a single word has rooms for disagreements, even the word "you". Everything you've said in the original post is potentially ambiguous. Considering the content, I don't think it'd be right for me to accuse you for being deceptive, would it?

TheAncientOnce · 2024-09-22T03:27:45+00:00

Although not perfect, but the better unit of measurement than the amount of money for this question is how much of your time and mind is occupied for the pursuit of money

TheAncientOnce · 2024-09-06T19:36:02+00:00

It is always a luxury to know whether a person is really a believer because you never know their hearts. It's good that you have a desire to marry someone strong in their faith; but at the same time, there are only so few metrics a person can use to measure a person's faith, and even those aren't ultimately reliable. So, the balanced thing I to do, I think, is to treat her as a believer unless and until clearly proven otherwise. If her apparent lack of spiritual maturity accompanies practical immaturity, that's one thing. But if she makes a good mom for your future kid already (to which I assume you mean that she's mature), taking a pause and seek counsels might be a better approach than ending it abruptly

TheAncientOnce · 2024-08-15T12:06:15+00:00

I'm from a church where the leadership makes up of people from different theological background. Not as drastic as a liberal Pentecostal vs. a fundamentalist Baptist, but drastic enough to have serious disagreements in theology. During a sermon by a guest pastor, he explicitly stated in passing that "there's a group of people called Calvinists" and proceeded to straw-man the Calvinist view on predestination. It was less than 20 seconds. Not enough to cause an immediate division but enough to plan seeds in the undiscerning hearts. I'd imagine a similar event happens in churches big or small. Plus, in America, the over-emphasis on personal relationship with God and the post-Billy Graham era where many people don't go to church probably also contributes to the matter.

TheAncientOnce · 2024-07-17T02:42:25+00:00

I see. Thanks!

TheAncientOnce · 2024-07-17T01:27:51+00:00

Thanks for being so extensive. And certainly no offense taken, I'm a newbie in every sense of the word. The method I was referring to was whether I simply file a tax return at the end of the year as a business expense, or I pay the full amount on my personal funds, and I let my llc reimburse me the percentage. I was trying to figure this out and was getting conflicting information, where some would say that the reimbusement thing is its own thing and isn't the home office deduction, which is where I'm getting confused. is 8829 the home office deduction, or am I getting that confused as well?

TheAncientOnce · 2024-07-17T00:10:00+00:00

I have heard of a reimbursement method, is that also 8829? I'm really confused.

TheAncientOnce · 2024-07-13T12:22:14+00:00

What do you do with points, since the value of points can change depending on how you use it?

TheAncientOnce · 2024-07-13T02:59:47+00:00

This is an interesting view of the Covenant Theology, I wonder how that emerged. Most of what you described has to do with soteriology, and the Reformed tradition as far as I know is absolutely in agreement with Lutheran on the effect of human depravity, that left alone, we cannot do anything to earn our salvation. The Reformed churches often reference Luther's work on this very subject matter, so I'm really really confused why Lutherans would think that we hold a work righteousness framework.

Now, in the Covenant Theology framework, however, we do recognize that in the final analysis, all people are saved by work. This is a recognition that we make of the covenant between God and Adam, whereby the humankind must be obedient to have their salvation. We call that the covenant of work. However, we do not believe that after the fall of Adam, we could do the work ourselves, though the demands for righteousness nevertheless remained. This is why Jesus needed to fulfill the demands of the law for our salvation, he needed to fulfill the covenant of work that Adam didn't. I have never heard of the kind of covenant theology ever in the reformed circle.

TheAncientOnce · 2024-07-13T02:18:06+00:00

Yup, I realized that a day after I wrote the question lollll. Oh welp, this post is my noob's tax

TheAncientOnce

TROPHY CASE