Though we debate aspects of being in Christ, think we can all agree:. if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature .[having been].created in Christ Jesus to do good works.[which we do with].our liberty which we have in Christ.[so we].do not turn [our] freedom into an opportunity.

"What was God doing before He made heaven and earth?". Augustine answers: nothing. "if before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it asked, What were You doing then? For there was no 'then' when time was not.". In a sense Augustine says there was no time for God to do

You, therefore, Ruler of Your creatures, what is the method by which Thou teachest souls those things which are future?.- Augustine

For if there are times past and future, I desire to know where they are. But if as yet I do not succeed, I still know, wherever they are, that they are not there as future or past, but as present. For if there also they be future, they are not as yet there; if even there they be.

Or maybe, Augustine muses, time accords with B theory (tenseless) because how else could God foreknow a future that doesn't exist. [There is the] past, present, and future, but only present, because these two are not? Or are they also; but when from future it becomes present,.

Did Augustine hold to the A theory or tensed theory of time?. That I measure time, I know. But I measure not the future, for it is not yet; nor do I measure the present, because it is extended by no space; nor do I measure the past, because it no longer is.

Augustine before he grapples with creation, eternity, time and God's relationship to them. "It is not for nothing that by your will so many pages of scripture are opaque and obscure.".

God is temporal . if and only if His life has phases which are related to each other as earlier and later. God has . experientially a past, present and future . God is timeless if and only if He is not temporal . He has no past, present and future.- WLC

Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.- WLC.

We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, [and] to read our sacred writings [to] nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we make our confidence more steadfast; and no less by inculcations of God's precepts we confirm.

the peculiarities of the Christian society [is] a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. - Tertullian

uncertain statements should be determined by certain ones, and obscure ones by such as are clear and plain; else there is fear that, in the conflict of certainties and uncertainties, of explicitness and obscurity, faith may be shattered, truth endangered, and the Divine Being.

Despite Satan inciting God (2:3), implicitly asking for, and receiving, permission to test Job's "fear of God" he isn't mentioned again after the opening. The focus shifts to Job who asks the age old question: why has God allowed all these terrors and adversities to be brought.

The epic of Job fills us in on what "the god/ruler of this world" looks like, reminding us he operates as a volitional agent under the permission and limits of a sovereign God.

This question presumes that a person has both a physical body (dust/earth) and a soul/spirit. It also doesn't dig too much into the idea that the soul will have a body - either natural/perishable or spiritual/imperishable. That in this tent (physical body) we groan, longing to.

Is the soul immortal, once created it never ceases to exist?. Solomon seemed conflicted. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward (Ecc 3:21). the dust returns to the ground it came from,.and the spirit returns to God who gave it (Ecc 12:7).

This would seem to gather additional support from the statement: "[let the world] see your good works".

🤔What is the salt & in what way does it become useless?. Perhaps 2 Kings 2:20-22 (cmp Ex 30:35; Lev 2:13) suggests it relates to the purity of Jesus' disciples. This could be supported by the beatitudes, particularly the pure in heart, as well as the following reference to being.

You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become [tasteless/foolish/worthless], how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything. #QuestionsJesusAsked.

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?. He has now reconciled you . in order to present you before Him holy and blameless . if indeed you continue in the faith.