God broke his own laws? … no integrity at all? Might as well make Him a liar too and say he arranged all the evidence to make fools of all the scientists. While you are at it, why not add murder and genocide with total callous disregard for life who smashes any people He made for any defect whatsoever.
…sounds more like the devil to me, frankly. But I guess I am picky about the sort of being I am willing to worship.
Yeah when you make it sound like a comic book or Walt Disney cartoon and then claim this is the guide for our lives then yes it sounds pretty stupid. “Hey doctor, it hurts when I hit my head like this.” Doctor: “Maybe you shouldn’t hit your head like that.”
There is a caveat here. We can do anything He did with the Holy Spirit. But as that tends to have supernatural properties I guess you don’t believe in that either. Shame, it is actually very helpful, especially if I get out of my depth. Which happens more often than I would like to admit.
So, this is one thing that has had me confused and is also a bit of topic. The definitions i found between the two are:
“Basically, magic and miracles differ in their source: magic has either a human or demonic source, but miracles are a supernatural work of God.”
The thing i wonder is jesus is the son of God, but he also walked the earth as a human, so does that mean because he is the son of God that it overides such acts and they are thus miracles?
Jesus cornered the master of the ceremony who had the authority to address the guests and he praised the groom for not cutting the wine after they had freely drunk, to pretend wealth, and give them cheap wine when thy had lost their pallet / been drunk already. Now some people could of course interpret the comment of the master of ceremony as a complaint that the groom has so far served them the cheap wine, but that would imply the master of ceremony having failed his duty to reject that wine. If however th groom had enough money to buy plenty of wine that praise would be fake as it would imply him to be wealthy thus not needing to do so and the master of ceremony would imply a fake reality supported by Jesus. .
The hand chisseled stone jars used to hold this sacred water were used especially for that purpose to prevent fouling, as only stone jars did. Clay could not be used for that due to its porosity and glazing was not yet invented. To fill them with a fermented drink - as wine was known to be to those primitive goat herders - would have spoilt those sacred jars. So no, the water served would have been blissfully pure and tasted accordingly without any taste as pure as pure can get.
I wish you to experience to drink from one of those sacred wells as you will never forget that and always stay thirsty for that taste, as I do.
I actually read verse 9 as “the water that was born to be wine” or “had come to be wine” which implies it to be a placeholder for the wine, and to me the ability to recognise that the value of that cleansing water makes it the best wine I can ever get is probably in recognition of my need of repentance. Clearly is someone finds a fine wine more valuable and chooses to read the text in that way - feel free to do so. It just implies that one sees the value in ones God in generating a fake reality according to ones wishful thinking, and perhaps I wish for a different God, but then it is our wishes that characterise us
Hmm, When Moses turned his staff into a snake and the Egyptian magicians did the same. One was true and the other was magic, and because Moses’s snake ate the other two it proved that God’s version was the right one…
Yes, I heard that. Doesn’t make it right, but I have heard that.
Very dodgy theology.
MIracles are not there to be debunked or explained. They serve a purpose. They proclaim God’s sovereignty over His creation. It doesn’t matter whether we can explain them now, What matters is the reaction of the viewers at the time. A radio would be magic to someone who did not know how it worked.
It seems that people are more concerned with the actions than the meaning or results of them. The Bible is still about theology, not science, or even infallible factual history.
healing is to create mind-body harmony, not to give you the body you wish for. Healing may also be the process to allow you to find peace with God when you leave this world.
If healing would be to give you the body you wish for than those who transition should be happy, The 20fold higher suicide rate of transitioned people in a study from Sweden suggests otherwise. Look at Nick Vujicic and tell me if he is healed supernaturally or if he is in need of healing.
The point of miracles is to point at God. They show a supernatural e.g. not material causality of events, not an abnormal cause of events.
Life is the ability to move energy or matter at will. This is how you make wine, not by accident of by breaking the God given laws of physics but by using them. you have authority over the physical elements yourself, as you can lift a stone of split an atom. If you admire a God for doing abnormal things are at risk to admire an abnormal God. I admire a God that put laws upon reality to make it obey his order. If he would have to break the laws he willed into existence he would not be omnipotent to me but impotent as he can not follow his own will. We have plenty of those folks here on earth, we don’t need them in heaven
Never really thought about it, but the Cana water to wine story is sort of recapitulated at the Last Supper, when Jesus speaks of wine being his blood, with his blood being the means of purification. And it speaks to me that I think of it not being wine turned to blood, but rather his blood became the wine that we may freely partake of.
So, whether literal or not, it is metaphorical.
My position is certainly not that I know what happened. Clearly I do not. The point is that there are many possible explanations other than abra-cadabra. So… I keep giving your alternative suggestions a thumbs up.
Agreed. The story definitely seems to imply that there was a few empty jars. Definitely not jars filled to the top with the best wine. Maybe some wine. Who knows. But what Jesus gave them was not watered down wine but their best wine saved for last. So the only logical conclusion from the story is water turned into wine. Knowing that combined with communion representing his blood with wine it’s hyperlinking back to the miracles of Moses when he turned the water into blood/ or something like blood.
Do you realize that your interpretation of this story is exactly the kind of thing people say to discredit Christianity?
The miracle at the wedding in Cana is eucharistic, the first miracle in Jesus’s public ministry. John tells us that the water had become wine.
John 2:11 says, What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
So what did Jesus do? How did it reveal his glory?
Do you realize that is your argument is the same one that the creationists use? If God didn’t poof those animals into existence then you might as well be an atheist materialist. As if only the abra cadabra fairy story makes Christianity worth believing in.
I guess I don’t believe in the magical Walt Disney version of Christianity any more than these people you speak of – the kind that is in opposition to science and rationality.
No the TRUTH is that the ones discrediting Christianity are those who teach it like a fairy tale and equate it with magic.
And do you drink blood at your church? I don’t.
Let me see… what did Jesus come to do?
wizardry? no.
necromancy? no.
to destroy the laws of nature? no.
to prove that science and evolution are stupid? no.
to make us believe that screaming “Jesus” will cure cancer and solve global warming? no.
If any of that were so, then I am not Christian and the Bible is trash.
What does Jesus say about why He came?
John 10 I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
John 18 For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.
And what is life and truth?
Magic? Uh… no. Life is not magic. And magic is not the truth.
The laws of nature are true. This can even be demonstrated to be true.
God is true. Even though this cannot be demonstrated.
The objective facts and the subjective experience are both true.
But wizardy and necromancy? Nope. That is not true or any part of life except as fantasy entertainment.
What is great and glorious? To break the laws of nature and do magical transformations? That is not what Jesus said. He said if you would be great then you would be a servant of servants. And that is what He did in Cana of Galilee, whether the disciples understood this or not – mostly not.
I’ve heard the context was specifically related to the Roman occupation. Roman soldiers could command Jews to carry their stuff, but only for a mile. They could commandeer clothes and they could physically assault Jews with impunity. There was an active violent resistance movement, but Jesus was advocating passive resistance (heaping coals on their heads). These passages were studied by Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. specifically as a non-violent resistance roadmap.
Funny you mention this, i remember a while back someone equated jesus turning water into wine with the harry potter books, though i never read the harry potter books so i can’t really say as to what similarities there are.
I have read the Harry Potter Books. The comment just meant they didn’t believe in hocus pocus. But obviously I don’t think the story in the Bible has to be read that way at all. And if you insist on reading it that way then the book belongs in the fantasy section of the library. In fact… back in high school someone asked me what I thought of the Bible and I compared to other fantasy novels I liked. It is not an insult. I like fantasy and science fiction novels very much. But if it not one of these then it would have to about real life according the way things really happen.
The key to understanding the biblical text is to apply a hermeneutic which takes into account the historical and literary context. This can be done by employing historical-grammatical exegesis. This method presupposes that human beings are rational creatures capable of linguistic communication, and that linguistic communication is meaningful and objective. Historical-grammatical exegesis involves a systematic approach to analyzing in detail the historical situation, events and circumstances surrounding the text, and the semantics and syntactical relationships of the words which comprise the text. In essence, it attempts to formalize what language speakers do automatically and unconsciously whenever they read a book, watch television or engage in conversation. [Ref]
This is not reading literalistically. It takes into account the type of text being read and includes consideration of figures of speech, poetry vs prose, metaphor, allegory, and other conventions.
Any passage will have a literal meaning but may also have one or more spiritual meanings; Allegorical, Moral, or Anagological. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church para 115-119.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
107
Historical-grammatical method is almost exclusively used by conservative Protestants. The Creation International Ministry’s definition above is not objective. The assumption of the method is that the Bible is inerrant, and of course infallible, which makes it entirely circular, a very tightly closed loop. More, including total, Western Catholic churches use everything else and and but, with a soupcon of historical-critical. Eastern Catholic (Orthodox) have a more sophisticated but still traditional canonical magisterial approach.
If the irrational assumption is removed, the method seems quite reasonable. But it never is. All evangelicals have the assumption. All.
