No, but from the other side, people need to realise that it is God’s wriggle room, not their assertive precision.
Richard
No, but from the other side, people need to realise that it is God’s wriggle room, not their assertive precision.
Richard
It isn’t God that needs wiggle room. That would be the other guy
He may not need it, but the fact is He gives it.
And that is the difference between Him and you (et al)
Believing that He is and that He is true is not a wiggly proposition
It is not about what God is. it is about what God expects and allows.
People are very good at restricting on behalf of God when He requires no such thing. Be it humour, or frivolity (even sex) to specific demand and requirements for faith and doctrine.
A vision
Petr stands at the Pearly gates with the whole of humanity before him.
“This is how it is going to be. We will go through the Ten commandments and anyone who has broken one will be sent away”
And so it was, slowly but surely the mass was reduced to a small group of dour faced monks.
God took one look and said
“Bring them all back. I can’t spend eternity with this lot.”
Richard
dad, you are certainly persistent.
So let us try to proceed from your own principle:
Am I understanding you correctly that you read the Eden narrative as a literal description of events involving ordinary physical human beings in the ordinary physical world?
If so, that is a perfectly clear position. But then I am genuinely interested in what, within that same physical reading, you think the rest of the narrative describes: the serpent speaking, God walking in the garden, the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the cherubim with the flaming sword.
What do those things mean as events or objects in the physical world you think the passage is describing?
There is also another possible reading. You may take some elements of the narrative as straightforward physical descriptions and others as figurative or image-mediated. That is perfectly possible too.
But then the question changes: what in the text itself tells you where to switch?
What tells you that the woman being made from the man is to be read as a straightforward physical description, while some other element is to be read figuratively?
I am not asking whether such a distinction can be made. Of course it can.
I am asking what textual criterion you are using to make it.
Could you answer that specific question?
He expects us to believe His word. Even those that think they are clever
Adam ruled nature. Communication with animals was normal. Jesus walked with them and talked with them. He existed then. There is a tree called the tree of life. We see them also in New Jerusalem. There are angels with great power. One was sent to guard the road to Eden for awhile and make sure no one reentered the garden. The effect and appearance of what the angel used was called a flaming sword. You might guess at what the sword was. You may not guess that an angel guarded the way.
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Not my vision.
Probably not based on any sort of reality
So I guess you think it worthless
So did David.
Before you can believe Scripture you have to understand it
When I was child, i spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things.
I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old
let the wise listen and add to their learning,
and let the discerning get guidance—
**6 **for understanding proverbs and parables,
the sayings and riddles of the wise.[a]
I spoke to the prophets, gave them many visions and told parables through them.”
I have not bothered to cite where they came from, you should know, or be able to find them.
It seems that God is not quite so simple and explicit as you claim.
Richard
Not much of an effort for waving away the clear reality and record God gave us
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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