{"id":644,"date":"2013-08-20T06:43:46","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T12:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/a-lively-faith-644.htm"},"modified":"2013-08-20T06:45:02","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T12:45:02","slug":"644","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/644-644.htm","title":{"rendered":"A Lively Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpFirst\">The discussion has been helpful. It is tautological to say a <em>personal relationship<\/em>. A relationship between persons is by definitely personal \u2013 but simply to say it is personal does not define it very well. There are many kinds and levels of personal relationship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">The older language of <em>a lively faith<\/em> is perhaps more helpful. Faith can be separated from charity. As James says, the demons believe and tremble. A faith can be merely notional, a commitment to a set of abstract statements.<span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">Or we can have faith in a person, trust in that person\u2019s love for us, and this is the sort of faith that we have (or should have) in God. It is obscure or weak in many people, but I think it keeps them going.<span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">However, when we realize that Jesus died for us, for each of us and all of us as the new humanity, and pours his Spirit upon us, and cares for us, and wills our good, we have lively faith.<span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">The key word is <em>realize<\/em>, and I think that Newman discussed that matter at length. When the truth of the Redemption becomes real to us, something we stake our whole existence on, that gives meaning to everything, then we have what some call a personal relationship with Jesus. Is this what people mean?<\/p>\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-644\" data-postid=\"644\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-644 themify_builder themify_builder_front\">\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<!-- \/themify_builder_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The discussion has been helpful. It is tautological to say a personal relationship. A relationship between persons is by definitely personal \u2013 but simply to say it is personal does not define it very well. There are many kinds and levels of personal relationship. The older language of a lively faith is perhaps more helpful. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}