Out of context much?

ISAIAH 64:6 is a comparison of “good”. Man’s “good” does not compare with God’s good. It does not speak to the innate value of a person, or the value that God places our heads. Ditto for Rev 20 and Luke 12

This is where the “1st Point” falls on it’s face. While man is depraved, to an extent, we have infinite value to God, hence he paid the ultimate price to purchase us.

Vance;
Human good is a minus righteousness, unacceptable to God-See
ISAIAH 64;6. HUMAN GOOD DOES NOT EQUAL DIVINE GOOD.

THAT’S WHY THE BOOKS ARE OPENED IN REV20;11-15. It will be shown that;
1. man’s good works cannot save
2. to determine degree of punishment-Luke 12;48.

No, I am not mistaking human good for divine good. I am recognizing human good as the aspect of our nature that reflects the image of God, who is good.

Human nature is either the result of our original creation, or the result of the Fall. I don’t think that the good in our human nature can have arisen out of the Fall, so I conclude that it is that aspect of our original nature that our sin does not, and can not, fully overwhelm.

Vance; Our human nature has an area of strength-human good, or a relative righteousness, and an area of
weakness, sins we commit. You are mistaking human good for divine good.
I hope this helps you.
Blessings.

Yes, Dr. Foltz, I understand the concept, but I disagree with the total depravity idea that God’s image became entirely unrecognizable and, thus, essentially non-existent. I simply see too much evidence to the contrary around me every day.

It does not say in Genesis 5 that once Adam was created in God’s image that we, as the descendants of Adam, somehow lost all that was image-bearing. Again, we see so much in people that are obviously not the outflow of our sin nature that it must be part of our God-image nature. What sets us apart from the rest of God’s Creation is what constitutes the “image of God”, I believe. And that exists in every human regardless of their relationship with God, their redemption from sin, etc. Those are matters that deal with our “right” relationship to God, and possibly where we will spend eternity, but we all still are creatures created in God’s image with basic values that, not arising out of our sinful (ie selfish) nature, must be part of that God-image nature.

Vance; Adam was made in God’s image. When he fell it was so marred, so defaced that it is unrecognizable.
we are made in Adam’s fallen image-read GENESIS 5;1-5.

I think I would give a bit more weight to palatibility than you do, Michael. I think we are made in God’s Image and, regardless of the introduction of sin, I think that means something. I believe that we have certain basic core reactions to everything around us, including God, that derive out of this “image” foundation. Even those who deny God’s existence and are not right with God will often show wonderful qualities of this God image, such as compassion, empathy and justice. Our sinful nature, even absent the work of the Spirit, does not seem to inevitably quash these.

And one of those core God-image qualities we bear, I would think, would be justice. When we see injustice, we internally rebel and want things set right. And, so, when viewing theological constructs and theories and propositions, I think our internal, “gut” reactions should become a factor. Not just whether we like something or dislike it, since that can be swayed by the sin nature that is also within us. But when something hits our core being as simply unjust or in some other way slams against our deepest core traits, we have to ask whether it is offending our sinful human nature, or that God’s-image-bearing nature that is also there in all of us.

Fortunately, nothing that we ingest makes us clean or unclean. Palatable or not it passes through the body. But what comes from the heart . . . well that’s another story. : )

Perhaps a little more to the point: The aphorism is very nice and strikes a deep chord, but like comments about the “plain reading of scripture”, once we move out of the abstract we find that there’s a lot more work left to do to flesh out the implementation.

[...] 13, 2009 by Roger Servin Here is a post from the blog of C Michael Patton…  I thought it was very well written and thought I’d put it up here for you faithful [...]

Michael, stop being always so quick to read hostility into my simply pointing out something.