One thing to consider on the nature of God is to consider the evolution of God. Judaism is not the oldest faith. It’s not even the oldest faith in the ancient near Middle East. Judaism was not originally monotheistic. Before that it was Monolatristic and before that it seems it was polytheistic. It seems that it potentially begin as a cult within Canaanite society. Are we certain that God did not accommodate ancient Jewish men with a deity they were already familiar with such as El or Yahweh. Then merge them. Are we certain that “let’s make them in our own image” is about the trinity or hosts of heaven and not within a Pantheon?
It seems it’s just as silly to me to fine tune God off of the Bible just as much as it’s silly to fine tune creationism off of it.
None of that means doubting god either. It means doubting the Bible is the only scripture of the only faiths to lay claim to god and accommodationism.
Just because God used Yahweh and Judaism to accommodate mankind and brought Christ up through that does not mean Jesus was only fulfilling Judaism.
Every religion right now has people claiming special powers through their god or whatever. Wiccans claim fairies give them prophecies of the future. Christians swear they know a guy who saw this or that or that they saw this or that. Bigfoot believers swears Bigfoot flipped their truck. Hindus swear they remember their past lives. Indigenous medicine men and women swear they can heal you with smoke and so on.
How many of y’all are Mormons? Again, nothing against them I think they are Christian just as much as you and I. But how many of yall believe that they have a prophet in their church? A prophet above all prophets? Who thinks Russel Nelson is the seer of God? A whole denomination accepts it. Many have witnessed his powers. If you don’t believe it? How would you test his claims? Would you ask for evidence? Are you not seeing it because you don’t believe? What if the proof was “ I know a guy and you just need to believe “. What if he claimed he could raise the dead? Would you want to see him raise a corpse or just say yeah I believe.
To be honest I think these things for many are more of a state of disillusionment with reality. Maybe a bit of self repeated fabrication overtime to create a better story. But it depends on what you are claiming.
There is no point claiming anything. It is second hand at best. You have no reason to believe me. In fact I have been directly involved in several "miracles " and witness to at least one more. I am neither delusional nor boasting. I know what I know. It does not confirm or deny my faith in God. I just know.
I am sorry for your scepticism but it is perfectly understandable.
As for biblical miracles? I take them for what they appear to be. Even if we could explain them away with science it would not change anything. Knowledge out of time is equally miraculous.
The simple answer is Yes. And all those theologians who try to tell us that we need to believe exactly as they are instructing us need to go back to what Jesus said about the last judgement in Matthew. He didn’t say He was sending anyone to Heaven because they believed in Him, or to Hell because they didn’t believe in Him! And I am sure it is a mistake if anyone tries to just do literally what He said there, and help those in need, and expect to get to Heaven. The undertone of the story is that those sent to Hell didn’t think they deserved that, and those accepted to Heaven didn’t think they deserved that! So the major point I draw from this is not to try to second-guess Jesus.
Another important point: God is not willing that any should perish; Jesus died for everyone. I leave it up to God how this applies to the aboriginies in central Australia in the 1500’s, and to all those other billions around the world who were raised in different religions. It is not my responsibility to judge them, or anyone else. I believe strongly that the heavy emphasis on what to do in certain parts of scripture, including the emphasis on believing in Jesus, and the warnings that someone who believes most of his life, but falls away at the end, is subject to God’s judgement, that all these warnings are to help us keep ourselves on track, not to give us the right to judge anyone else.
So, Adam, I believe that what God wants of you is that you have a good relationship with Him, that you learn things while you are here on this earth that will make your eternity in Heaven even better than it would have been without those experiences.
And I hope that you have already sensed that there is quite a range of beliefs represented in this community, and yet we can all have a very civil and respectful conversation, understanding that we each have our own personal responsibility for our own personal relationships with God, and with our fellow humans.
Wasn’t it Paul who celebrated his doubts? The human three-pound wet computer is notoriously susceptible to confusion: attempts to reduce a confusion frequently allow an alternate confusion to slip in from behind.
Genesis is theology. Creation is of GD hence cannot mislead or fib or lie. Genesis 1:1,3 clearly describes GD as Creator (from nothing() of time, space, natter, and light. Modern research has a name for that, the big bang.
But since Earth is a globe with a thin crust of continents surrounded by films of water (seas) and orbiting the nearest star, the events of Days Two, Three, and Four collide head on with the facts. But that only reminds us that the “real facts” would requite a thousand scrolls with a huge number of new abstract terms, thus completely deface the theology that fits neatly into the first ten chapters plus ten verses in chapter eleven.
That material describes GD as Creator of a universe, definer of right vs. wrong, owner of all that He created, and how humans should address, interact with, pray to, confess to, and worship GD.
The text of Genesis regards the Creator with devotion and (my words) accepts the stage scenery of Eden, Adam, Eve, patriarchs, Flood, out to the Tower of BabEl as illustration. Yes in Bible times, including the New Testament, all references to Genesis appear to be factual, yet in every single case the point being made is theological.
The Judeo-Christian scripture begins as a vessel to teach semi-literate Bronze-Age survivalists, and current crops of six-year-olds, about GD. From there it begins to focus increasingly on adult matters. The New Testament “puts away childish things.” Jesus as part of the godhead drew on GD’s power to feed the five thousand, raise the dead, heal the infirm, then endured the absence of GD [[ Jesus read into the public record, via reciting its opening verse, Psalm 22, “My god, my god, why hast Thou forsaken me?” - to illustrate that He underwent the complete separation from GD that our sins doom us to experience ]] His death of body and death of separation absolve us from our sin. He paid our price in full.
Scripture is many things, said in many ways, But by the time we reach the New Testament, that part is as real as real can be.
p.s. hopefully my wife doesnt ever read this or i might be living outside with the dog…actually, come to think of it, the dog would be better off because she gets to sleep inside at night.
I think the moderators have misunderstood my statement above...and since the comment is important and relevant i need to clarify.
I do not mean my marriage is absurd or timewasting, quite the contrary. My wife and i are totally committed to each other and steadfast in our commitment.
The point is, we (my wife and I) are opposites in gender, the way we do things…it is that sort of husband and wife polar opposites “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” evidence that points to the contrary that we should/could remain married and yet, here we are…so very much in love with a family that we both adore. I honestly couldn’t imagine life without my wife, who is my best friend, and my kids (oh and the animals of course)
Christianity is a bit like that for me, there are so many evidences that point to the contrary of the Christian belief, one could/should turn away from it. However, despite those evidences, individuals like myself choose to seek the “still small voice” of God and follow Christ (to remain “married” to God, if i can say it that way).
I hope the above clarifies my original statement and i apologise for the original confusing statement, i should have elaborated in the first place.
I have tried to reconcile this idea however, i have come to learn the hard way (in theological debates with my theologian father) that the standard model of “The big Bang” cant be theologically reconciled with creation account in the bible…there are some significant issues when one attempts to do that and so I’m back to the drawing board on that one. I think a variation of the big bang is certainly true obviously because the bible begins with the statement “in the beginning God” (clearly He came before everything else).
The problem is, God is eternal and the notion that he sat around for billions of years twiddling his thumbs trying to think of something to do simply isn’t sensible. So the “greater universe” is eternal just like He is.
the question is, what defines the “greater universe”?
The bible gives us examples of Satan appearing and dissapearing (ie temptation of Christ), the angel of the Lord appearing and dissapearing (Saul before he became the apostle Paul)…clearly there is a capacity for beings to exist in a realm that we cannot sense…or test scientifically at present.
Perhaps a solution to the above dilemma may very well lie in alternate realities or a multiverse (and that is the way I’m leaning at present).
Look into Near Death Experiences or NDEs. You will find a wide range of reports, some of them just grinding axes. The central line is the similarities:
separation of soul from flesh
flatlined brain waves and heartbeat
perception of things not available via the senses of the silent body
even though the brain records no action (such as recording memories) the individual has clear recall of deeply surprising events:
full recall of entire lifetime, requiring no passage of time, but every sin shown by its effect on others, with no implied guilt, merely instruction and an urge to repent to the offended one(s)
meeting known individuals - in the West it is usually Jesus.
in the East one example was being led to at table to be examined, only to find that the being escorting the person was chastised for bringing the wrong person (two very similar names) - the person was escorted back to his body, and at the same time a different person in a nearby hospital room with the “correct” name died.
winding up in what can only be hell; the descriptions were uniformly TERRIFYING and, since the individual returned to tell about it, release came only after impassioned pleading for Jesus to arrive.
In such cases the horriffic damage paused while the person began to plead for Jesus to come. This part is consistent.
There is always an opportunity to stay put, rather than return to a cold, hurting, disabled body. A the same time the person is urged to return, to right wrongs and continue to support those depending on him/her. Of course, no one who chose to stay behind ever returns to tell us about that.
The preponderance of the evidence is that soul / anima / persona / spirit functions in that environment, and that being rejoined to flesh is remembered.
Bottom line, spirit is freed to roam a “spirit world” with a real hell and a heaven that allows departed relatives to come to greet you. Body is stuck in the real world - only Jesus could go through walls, or vanish from the sight of the men on the road to Emmaus.
Hi Adam,
As a physicist, specializing in solar and interplantetary spacecraft data analysis, I did get a pretty good foundation in understanding basic cosmology. The point that was somewhat difficult for me to understand, because I do not have direct personal experience with the effect, is the relativity of space and time, that is, the fact that the space and time that we experience in this world is an integral part of the created universe.
So: If, as I believe, God created the universe, then God exists outside of the space AND TIME of the universe that He created. God said this in the bible - He called Himself “I Am”!
What does it mean that God exists outside of the space and time of the created universe? I believe that it means that He is there, all around the finite space of this immense universe - outside, but not in a place that we can measure with the space dimensions of our universe, and also outside of the finite time duration of the created universe: Existing before, during, and after the universe exists. And I do believe that this place where God exists is where He will take us to be with Him - not in the time or space dimensions we are experiencing in this world.
Maybe this will be of some use to you in thinking about what could possibly be.
As for Big Bang being reconciled with the creation account in Genesis, lots of us have found no serious problem with that, just by not considering the Genesis story to be a literal history book. I am quite sure that the intention of Genesis is not to tell us humans exactly how, or when, God created the universe; one minister I had quite a few years ago claimed that the purpose of Genesis was to tell us why. I do note that it is impossible to tell by any observation whether God did create the entire universe 6000 years ago, with every single photon and subatomic particle in the entire universe exactly where it would have been if the whoe thing had been created in a Big Bang. Anyone who does believe this to be what “really” happened needs to have an explanation for why God would do it that way, leaving evidence that the earth, and the universe, are much older. And I have come to realize that my relationship with God has much more to do with me believing that He created this universe, than it does with me knowing the exact truth about when and how He did that.
What is the basis you are using to identify yourself as a Christian? A spirit of love and forgiveness through Jesus appears to be all that Jesus requires. All else is a religious construct by man. Something that people fail to realize is that words and language are a human creation, not God’s. This fact is depicted in the Garden of Eden story with the naming of the animals that God brought to Adam. The literal interpretation of the original Hebrew words in the Bible would be placing a human limitation on God to the knowledge that existed more than 2500 years ago. That would defy the nature of God. There must be other ways to translate/interpret what the Bible is telling us as we grow in knowledge. A way that I use to extend my understanding of the Bible is to apply an epistemic translation that retains the original Hebrew words while simply adding vocabulary, based on knowledge, to the possible translation of those words. For example, Genesis would start by saying, “In the beginning God created space and matter, and the matter was without form and void. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the fluid matter”. There were no better words available in the ancient Hebrew vocabulary to say this. An epistemic translation adds a unique credibility to the Bible that no other ancient religious text has. It can be extended to many other passages that describe the natural world as we know it. There are many ways to interpret the Bible stories other than as literal fact. Metaphor, figurative, and parables come to mind. Jesus’s message is pretty clear, though. Love God and your neighbor and forgive those who ask for forgiveness. That is the essence of being a Christian. The Lord’s Prayer pretty much sums it up.
They were seen as unusual; that’s why they were called miracles rather than just unusual events.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
Um, what? How do you know the mind of God well enough to make such an assertion? For all we know He sat back and enjoyed how the angels reacted to an unfolding universe.
But that shows the flaw in the thinking: God doesn’t experience time the way we do, so thirteen billion years to Him isn’t even comparable to thirteen years for us.
Besides which – to play the science fiction as theology game – if He is limited by time’s flow as we are, He could have merely selected the time flow right next to a giant black hole and spent just thirteen minutes watching thirteen billion years.
Which prompts me to think this: God is omnipresent, so He experienced thirteen-plus billion years as the oldest red dwarfs in our spacetime region did, but He also experienced just thirteen minutes near the event horizon of a giant black hole, and He experienced all the other ways that time flow gets weird to us – all at once. I’d say that alone qualifies as “alternate realities”.
And some scholars of Hebrew, on the basis of Genesis 1, gave a summary of Creation that reads like a layman’s summary of the Big Bang: the universe starting off with the smallest possible dimensions, being filled with fluid, expanding rapidly and thus thinning the fluid, then when the fluid had thinned (I think one said “rarefied”) sufficiently for light to shine then God commanded light to exist, where the Earth is old beyond human counting and the universe much older still – and all of this centuries before Galileo.
Actually, calling Him “Lord” in the sense of giving allegiance seems to be more basic since Jesus associates that with being in the Kingdom of Heaven. The spirit of love and forgiveness would be expressions of that allegiance: as does the King, so does the subject.
You’re assuming that the Hebrew intended to speak such things in the first place.
That amounts to rewriting the text to make it conform to your personal worldview.
Yes, like reading it as the ancient literature it is – that’s the normal way to deal with literature.
Only where that’s what the text is, otherwise you’re just changing the text to fit your preferences.
Faith based on changing what a text means isn’t faith in what the text talks about. For the struggle between doubt and faith – especially when things in the text are involved – letting the text be what it is is essential.
This is one reason that YEC so often destroys faith: it is so obvious to most people that the entire Hebrew scriptures aren’t modern literature, and all the crazy attempts to force it to be some sort of modern literature look dishonest. A memory is not to be found in yet another attempt to make the text be some other kind of modern literature or talk like it.
OP, you’ve been reduced to the core, to the foundation, to Christ and Him crucified. That’s where it all begins, the Event on which everything rests, the Incarnation of God the Word in human flesh. You’re right to stick to the text of Genesis, and should do the same in the Gospels.
Today’s “conservatives” aren’t; properly speaking, they’re radicals and/or reactionaries, wanting things to be simpler than they are and looking to restore some supposed “golden days” when things were simple.
True conservatism sticks to the basics, and in this case that means the text. I was trained to be very conservative, to allow nothing the text does not say, take away anything it does, and change nothing in it. I wasn’t taught that miracles have to be taken literally, rather I was taught that what the writers say has to be taken seriously – and a big part of taking the parts with miracles seriously is to ask “Why would they make it up?”
Things get trickier at that point because our inclination is to come up with reasons from our modern worldview, but none of those writers held our modern worldview (Luke may come close with his emphasis on investigating and reporting, but Luke comes along very late in the process) and so we have to try to crawl inside their worldview. Frequently that gets reduced to how they understood cosmology, for example seeing the world as a flat disk under a solid dome, but cosmology is really a secondary part of a worldview; we should be concerned with the core aspects of a worldview, beginning with their concept of truth, i.e. what makes something true – and the ancient Hebrew concept of truth doesn’t match the modern scientific definition at all!
YEC folks would love that you feel like an outcast because you have seen through their smokescreen; the prime element of their worldview is “We are right and thus righteous!” But if you take your stand on the text you will be in good company, as that was what the apostles and their students and their students’ students did, and all the great theologians down the ages.
I’ll note that “stick to the text” has to ultimately rely on the original languages – not that you have to learn them (and learning just a little can be worse than not learning at all) but that you should pay attention to actual scholars such as Tim Macke, Michael Heiser, and Craig Keener and try to grasp not the details of their presentations but the overall sens of how an ancient Israelite looked at the world. I sound off on this a lot here because I have been privileged to have had a great deal of that ancient wordview pounded into my skull; as a result I share something with you: I reject YEC not because of any science, but because it cannot be sustained from the text of Genesis.
But I also come from that perspective. Most here come from the science side to view things, especially YEC, but I encountered the YEC issue from the perspective of the text, and from that perspective the YEC approach looks both ridiculous and foolish, not merely wrong but dangerously so. Because of this the YECers here want me to feel like an outcast, but it won’t work because I take my stand on the text.
And in the end that means taking everything in the text seriously, in accord with the genre each portion was written as. In the Gospels, that means assuming that the writers weren’t making up miracles but meant them as real (an issue with literary aspects I won’t go into here) since the Gospels were written as biography of a type called βίος (BEE-ohss), a kind of literature meant to portray the personality and character of the subject.
So, fellow not-really-an-outcast . . .
This is what one of my professors called a “dessert question” because the answer starts with, “Sure, but”: sure, because the core of being a Christian is “Jesus is Lord”; but, because the miracles in the Gospels at least flow naturally from just Who our Savior is.
Something that I believe is important to remember concerning miracles in the Bible is that the bible may not be what you envision it to be. Many treat it as if it’s the fourth member of the “trinity”. Before getting to miracles you have to realize that the
Bible did not fall from heaven but was written by men. The Bible never claims to be infallible and even if it did, that would have been the original manuscripts which we no longer have. We have translations of translations of translations. We have dozens of different translations of the Bible. We have numerous collections called the Bible. We see evidence that the Bible we have today contains errors, contains redactions and highly debated translations.
But once you even get past that you then have to deal with interpretation. Many say “I let the Bible interpret itself” but the reality is that we interpret it ourselves with the help of others whose positions we may default to. We have a Bible that uses different genre which includes fictions like myths and satire. We see stories that seem to involve hyperbolic tales. We see a ancient near eastern Jewish book being interpreted by modern people who may not know the Jewish culture, let alone a 2 thousand year old version of it,
So the when Jesus walks on water. We can apply contextual analysis and we can study out word play and hyperlinks. But ultimately it’s your person opinion on did Jesus really walk on water or was it written as a storytelling element showing Christ is the Ark, the tree of life, the son of god and man who walked on water. Is it symbolic for what’s to became. The water symbolizes chaos and death and Jesus commands it, he walks on it, it does not swallow him up. He does not feel its sting. He commands the “tohu wabohu” to do as he says. Did it happen during a storm or was this just hyperlinking the story to God hovering over the formless watery void, or Noah in a Ark durning a storm, or baby Moses in a basket going down the canal. Is it Moses with a staff, feeling a great wind blow and separate then waters. Or did he literally walk several miles across water. Did he go up and down with the waves?
No body knows but it’s not any less faithful or Christian to go with it’s being fiction versus you talking literal.
There comes a point in reasoning and beleif when you have to make a decision about “miracles”. Miracles are portrayed in the Bible as an indication of jesus’ superhuman powers Jesus is clearly meant to be no ordinary human but His “powers” (miracles) are assigned to God directly as opposed to a magician whose powers are his own. IOW it becomes a belief, not in Jesus but God Himself. If the powers are false, then so are God’s powers. A God without power is Baal on Mt.Carmel…
There comes a point when you realize that there are tons of myths, hyperbole and fiction in the Bible and did not just end because we got to Greek culture. Speaking of such…. How often do you think Greeks added flavor to their stories when talking about someone of importance? Do you think we may even see clear signs of it in treatises and histories from then?
Or some people just are really gullible and can’t provide a shred of evidence and make themselves feel more special by pretending they have this super faith and that’s why they see magic.
Not sure if I ever told you this. I normally block people and bounce back a few times but once it hits a certain stage, I just ignore them completely forever. It’s why I never read whatever Vinnie says, or whatever that dude with the rainbow suspenders says, or a few others that I don’t remember. It’s also
Why I won’t be reading anything after this. Next time I accidentally read one of your posts will be the week or two after I block whenever I block after this and give it a few weeks before solidifying my stance. So since I’ve hit that stage with you, I won’t be reading anything you’ve said because there is no one I’m currently giving last chances. Believe me, I know you don’t care. I just typically let people know so they can decide if they want to waste time responding still or not.
