Theses for Debate

by Philip McPherson Rudisill

July 19, 1997

The following propositions will be defended against challenges:

1. If any person refuse to engage in any practice, e.g., murder, solely because it is forbidden by scripture, then that person is a Jew (technically speaking), and must obey the entire law.

2. The First of the Two Great Commandments can only follow, in truth, upon the capacity for compliance, at least progressively, with the Second. I.e., while formal love of God can be expressed in a ritual, spontaneous love must reflect an awareness of God's work in one's own capacity to love his neighbor as himself.

3. The only law for the Christian is the law of love.

4. The touch of God is always accompanied with an awareness of the love of God, i.e., with an assurance of His present love.

5. The Calvinist can never be sure, during life, that heshe is in communion with God or that God loves him.

6. According to the gospel accounts, the Christian marriage is merely a special case of Christian community, and therefore the community can encompass two or more persons and then also of the same or diverse sexes.

7. Obedience to secular law is merely derivative, while obedience to the law of love is original, i.e., the Christian obeys the secular law only to the extent it does not inhibit compliance to the law of love.

8. To be the image of God means, among other things, that the man cannot be perfect and whole without

a. being sovereign, i.e., his own man with regard to decisioning, and

b. being a member of a community, i.e., such that his own value is derived from that community and is not original.

9. It is not possible, according to the law of love, to wreak vengeance of any kind and any time, e.g., murderers may not be executed.

10. The sabbath day is individual, and there are no duties then except duties to others, i.e., one may not be unduly compelled on his personal sabbath.

11. To please God is to be understood as acting independently in a way that conforms to neighborly and brotherly love, i.e., in accordance with one's best understanding and in conscience. [I might want to suggest that God is furher pleased when we are conscious of his love for us.]

12. The prohibition against mistreating gentiles within the land of Israel, e.g., Leviticus 19:33-34), is to be understood to mean that the Jew is not to be mistreated anywhere or anytime, i.e., that heshe is sacred.

13. The deity can only be recognized by means of moral principles, and thus never by means of power alone.

14. Jesus was the greatest of the Jewish kings. Th matter is to be considered entirely subjectively, with regard to his consciousness, but which is (concetually) presupposed in order to derive his acts in the most thesis-purposeful way, e.g., tha he considered himself responsible for evey Jew and SO THEREFORE when Barabbas, the no-count, was excluded, he undertook his rescue, but not intentionally but always only willingly. Basically I want to compare the live of David with that of Jesus with reard to the concption that each had of himself as king, David crownedand Jesus in hiding or, perhaps rather, incognito.