CHRISTADELPHIANS
The
Christadelphians are a small Christian sect that hold
that God is one person not three persons.
They believe that Jesus was the Son of God because God made him without
a father in his mother’s womb. They hold
that Jesus was not God but many of them regard him as divine since his
resurrection in an inferior sense to God.
They believe that the Holy Spirit is not a person but a power.
They
believe that the Bible is wholly the word of God. Jesus did not die in our place to be punished
by God for our sins but to show us what sin deserved and to excite us to
mending our lives. He rose again in his
human body. There is no everlasting
torment and Hell in the Bible does not mean that kind of Hell. Those who have never heard the word of God
will rise again to hear it. The wicked
will never rise again according to some branches of the movement. The saved are those who know the Bible well
and believe in it and they will live in a
Christadelphians were founded by John Thomas in 1848.
The
sect invents its doctrines and then it bends the Bible to fit them.
For
example, since the Bible says that Jesus destroyed the Devil by his death and
since Paul handed sinners over to Satan in the hope that they would change they say the Devil is a parable for sin and temptation. Jesus destroyed temptation in himself by
dying. But destroyed in the Bible does
not mean caused to die. And Paul could
hand sinners over to Satan when they want to go to him and hope that their
having Satan will make them sick of him and bring them back to God. The Bible says we are tempted by our own base
desires which they think excludes Satan tempting us. But Satan uses our desires to tempt or to
make us tempt ourselves. When the Bible
refers to Satan in personal terms it is most likely that Satan is a
person.
The
sect though it says it believes in the atonement denies the doctrine that
Christ was punished on the cross for our sins so that we could get away with
them. But the way the
cross of Jesus is stressed in the New Testament and in the letters of Paul
indicate that it is more important than just an example and a
demonstration of how God views sin. The
Bible says that Jesus died for our sins as in a ransom. A ransom means that something has been paid
or suffered in the place of another.
Christadelphians say that Jesus paid the price of death to free us
from sin by his example so he paid his ransom vicariously for us to God. In other words, we needed to learn for
ourselves how God views sin but instead of God showing us personally and by
punishing us he used Jesus instead. But
that is not a ransom.
Jesus
must have meant what he was traditionally understood to mean by ransom, Jesus
paid his price to the justice of God so that God could free us from sin and
have him in our place.
Christadelphians argue that there would be no forgiveness without
Jesus’ death in the sense that you need to look at him and say he got what you
deserved and admit that before God can forgive you. The question is then why does God not give us
a vision of Jesus suffering on the cross to make the death as real as possible
to us so that we can see the point he is trying to make far more? And why Jesus? Surely any sinner would do? We all see people suffering and dying so why
Jesus?
Romans says that Adam made all dead and Christ reversed this and
made all alive. Adam credited his sin to
our account and Jesus counted his obedience to our account. This is the vicarious atonement for Christ is
depicted as reversing the sin of Adam which we suffer for and which weakens us
to make us more likely to sin. The
stress on Adam’s sin shows it is more than just a bad example or the entry of
the power of sin into the world for God can still halt that power so the cross
must be more than a good example for it bears the same relation to us as Adam’s
sin did.
The Christadelphians however should be thanked for not teaching
the barbaric traditional doctrine that Jesus vicariously justly paid for our
sins and got what our sins deserved so that we didn’t have to be punished. The innocent cannot pay for the guilty. That is not justice.
The
sect interprets texts that say that we will see God figuratively. Why could it not be that in
Many
in the sect says that God is a material being and some go further and say he
has a human body (page 68, Some Modern Faiths). They take literally the texts that speak of
God walking in the Garden of Eden and his condemnation of Gods that do not hear
and see. But God walking could mean that
God took the form of an angel or man.
And we do not understand spirit or immaterial reality so spirit might
hear and see without ears and eyes. God
is the Father and his Holy Spirit projects all over the universe and holds it
in being. If God is material and was not
made then why can’t the universe be like that?
God is not needed. These Christadelphians reject the argument of Catholicism that
there has to be a being that has no parts to make matter and which is the
reason for its own existence.
Some
Christadelphians still say that Jesus did not become
the Christ until his baptism in the
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12/06/08