User:JimWae/Limbo

Again with John 3:16
The following paragraph has been repeatedly restored - usually with only the comment "restore compromise"
 * Most Christians affirm the Nicene Creed and believe Jesus is both the Son of God and God made incarnate, sent to provide reconciliation with God by atoning for humanity's sins, and acceptance of Jesus as Saviour saves one from sin (John 3:16). Christians generally believe Jesus was born of a virgin, crucified and buried, resurrected on the third day of death, and ascended into Heaven where he resides with God the Father until the Second Coming. Other Christians, however, do not recognize the Nicene Creed as the correct interpretation of scripture.

The paragraph begins and ends with the Nicene Creed, and has been restored a number of times to retain that "bookending". Even if things in the middle are NOT about the Nicene Creed, if they are not, then such should be explicit.

I presume the first sentence of the paragraph is intended to be parsed as such
 * Most Christians
 * affirm the Nicene Creed
 * and
 * believe
 * Jesus is both the Son of God and God made incarnate, sent to provide reconciliation with God by atoning for humanity's sins,
 * and
 * acceptance of Jesus as Saviour saves one from sin (John 3:16).

With 2 "and"s in there and neither a comma nor a "that" to mark the parallelism, the sentence is at least syntactically awkward. But this is not an objection to syntax - I mention it only to point out how "stuck on" the last part of the sentence is.

1. The Nicene Creed does NOT say that "acceptance of Jesus as Saviour saves one from sin (John 3:16)" -- rather it says that Jesus came to save people - no condition is mentioned. The reverter contends it IS in the Nicene Creed, or implied, or something... -- but it is NOT there, and any revert based on such "reasoning" is POV and Original Research.

2. The sentence in NOT about Jesus, but rather about a religious relationship to Jesus. Not even the "Religious articles" on Jesus even mention this condition for salvation. This is supposed to be primarily a biography article about Jesus - not one domiinated by what certain sects teach about how one is supposed to relate to him.

3. Catholics & several other groups (Greek Orthodox too, I think) do NOT believe that acceptance of Jesus is a condition (neither necessary nor sufficient) of salvation. Catholic theologians had even "invented" Limbo for those who were neither baptized, nor had accepted Jesus. Until Jesus, all good people went to Limbo. For centuries afterwards, with most of the world never hearing of Jesus, Limbo would probably still have been FAR more populated than heaven. Even now, more conceptions end in spontaneous abortion than birth. While the RCs no longer teach Limbo, they do still teach that those who never "accepted" Jesus can be saved. The RCs seem ready to even say they are already in heaven. The RCs also teach that those adults who lead a "just life" yet never "accept Jesus", can also be saved.

4. Even IF the majority of Xians belonged to churches that held this John 3:16 position, it would be only a bare majority (and it is NOT clear even that is the case). The introduction is needlessly introducing an issue about which there is no general agreement in Xty - and gives NO indication that there is contention on this issue. This topic, not being generally agreed upon, does not belong in the introduction - John 3:16's being "stuck on" is evidence that it is there mostly to satisfy someone's desire to profess his/her faith. It is misleading to present only the Protestant view as the view of "most Christians" - there is also other distinctly Protestant vocabulary in the paragraph and article, btw, but that's for another day. The proportion of Xians who believe the first part of the sentence is in no waqy commensurate with the proportion of those who believe the last part - and it is misleading NOT to point this out.

5. The reverter seems to be under the impression that I have NOT generated agreement on the removal of this part of the text. I have demonstrated the validity of my point to several others already -- and only the reverter has remained opposed to my edit. Just because 4 or 5 people agreed on a compromise on week does not mean that the text is to remain unaltered despite further discussion.

The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism explains: 'For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God.'" (C.C.C. # 816)