Good and Evil, Towb and Ra

(You can be old and still be provincial. :grin:)

There’s no such thing as “holy spirit”; there’s the Holy Spirit Who according to the entire scriptures is God Himself. And He doesn’t lead “us”, as in individual Christians, into truth, He leads the church, primarily through its leaders and teachers. No one gets to interpret the scriptures alone – the scripture says so.

For the most part most Christians aren’t competent to do such comparison; we aren’t educated enough. That’s why we have to rely on such people as Michael Heiser, who delved so deeply into the Old Testament he sometimes seems to have known people like Samuel personally!

St. Cyril (of Jerusalem, IIRC) and St. Gregory of Nyssa said it first; Luther is just an echo. But it’s better stated as “prima scriptura” because the scriptures themselves tell us that “sola scriptura” isn’t accurate.

Nice shift of punctuation.

There’s a big reason that most people who have studied just enough Koine Greek to be able to make even bigger mistakes than most of us fall into the trap of sticking with the traditional punctuation, and that’s that the modern editions of the Greek New Testament insert punctuation! I think I learned more about translating Greek from the times we were given the text in the old style of no punctuation and no spaces between words than from any other kind of lesson!

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This seems to be saying that Jesus was Plan B.

An argument has been made that the idea was for humans to spread out and order the whole Earth so it would all be Eden – that’s really what “fill the Earth and subdue it” indicates, not that humans were to control the planet for their own benefit but to make it a paradise for all life.
But the interruption of that was no surprise, so Jesus was Plan A (or Plan א‎, to use the Hebrew letter).

Or, as I say to my neighbors and friends here in our retirement community: You all are getting older each year; I am only getting more childish!

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Striving to be more childlike before God in our old age is still a worthy endeavor though.

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It appears to me to be a bit of a stretch, involving several steps of inference, to claim that 2 Pet 1:3 is refering to scripture. What I read it to say, without interpretation, is that “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness,” and that this was said to people before they had any New Testament scriptures to read, so it must have been granted to them in some way other than through scripture. This is yet another case of needing to pay attention to the context in which a passage was originally written before inferring what it means to us today.

We’re baptized in God? (Acts 1:5, Luk 3:16). I trust you understand there was no capitalization in the Greek text. Everything was what we call capitals. When it comes to the spiritual matters of 1 Cor 11, it is also important to pay attention to the definite article. Sometimes it use with pneuma agion (holy spirit) and sometimes not. Would you think that has any significance?

The scriptures, just like most everything we read, interprets itself. We just need to avoid reading ideas into them.

Sounds like the dark age mantra of the Roman church. I don’t buy it. I did at one time, but not ever again.

Sure, it’s great to have folks like Heiser and other scholars, but we shouldn’t just accept anything they say without our own searching of the scriptures as did the Bearean in Acts. They didn’t even believe Paul until they verified it for themselves.

Specifically, it’s through the knowledge of God that we learn all things pertaining to life and godliness. How do we get that knowledge outside of the scriptures? Is there some other source or standard through which we may receive the great and precious promises of verse 4? Is their some other means by which we may share in the divine nature? Perhaps there is, but it would never contradict the scriptures, so in that sense the scriptures should always be the final authority.

Those who believe that God controls everything, including the actions of people, then Jesus would have been plan A. Of course some say that God doesn’t control but He does know ahead of time our actions. That doesn’t change anything though. If God knew ahead of time that Adam would sin, then Adam hardly have had a choice and he would have been a mere puppet without any real free will.

If on the other hand, God gave people genuine free will, then He would only know what they did or are doing, but He wouldn’t know what they may do in the future. He could certainly have a good idea based on past and present actions, but He couldn’t know for sure. If that’s the case, then Adam was plan A and when it didn’t work out He went to plan B, Jesus.

Never heard, “prima scriptura.” I like it! Thanks.

But there is a caveat. Yes, we can learn from other people as well as direct revelation, but whatever we hear should be compared to scripture. If it goes against scripture, it goes into the trashcan. So in that sense, “sola scripture” does ring true.

Maybe you missed this above? If you believe God is omnipresent then you should believe he is omnitemporal. It has to do with free will. (Follow the first link and maybe watch the NOVA1 – it’s pretty cool.) It is indeed a mind bender that we cannot get our heads around, to maybe mix up a metaphor and state a paradox paradoxically, but it’s a wonderful mystery to his children who have experienced his interventions.

 


1 Those outside the U.S. maybe cannot watch it, but there is a transcript viewable on the page. And FYI to others, I just discovered that the original link I included includes multiple episodes and so it is not unlikely some (most? :slightly_smiling_face:) readers did not watch any. This is the one that pertains and is very significant however:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-fabric-of-the-cosmos-the-illusion-of-time/

Why?

I didn’t watch the NOVA video. Only so much time and I’m loath to accept anything as Biblical truth coming from PBS. Not that it’s impossible, but I do think it highly unlikely, probably around one 1 pm south of impossible. “Ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” comes to mind.

Because it’s good science. The NOVA illustrates ‘spacetime slices’ and their universality. If God is omnipresent, he is omnipresent in space and therefore he is omnipresent in spacetime slices. Since he is omnipresent in spacetime slices, therefore he is omnipresent in time: he is omnitemporal.

Your knowledge of the truth can grow and is not static, I certainly hope.

If it is any comfort to you, PBS is not claiming anything about God – that he even is, let alone that he is omnitemporal.

  • You’re not missing anything, unless the idea of God traveling back into the Past or forward into the Future–for no rational reason that I can think of–or the possibility that God doesn’t have a clear idea of Now entertains you.

No traveling is required. He is already there.

Correct me if I am misremembering, but you do not believe God is omnipresent.

A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
Psalm 90:4

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
2 Peter 3:8

Is God confused, @Terry_Sampson ?

If what you are saying is true (I don’t think so, but maybe it is) then in this day and age we have a huge leg up on Moses. He had no way of knowing about spacetime slices or QM. What truth was withheld from him?

Why would God talk to someone in terms they had no way of understanding. Try explaining QM to a 2 year old.

But if God did communicate in terms that would take 4,000 years to decipher, one might wonder what truth might take another 4,000 years to discover (assuming science continues to make more discoveries about our physical world). Why would they get to know truths we would have no way of knowing?