So, basically Jesus would be given the governments but not the planet itself?
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Right. It’s power and influence that is the temptation, not land ownership.
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A system designed out of hubris so those who know the “secrets” (special knowledge) could consider themselves superior.
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Yes – Satan has never had authority over the planet and its non-human inhabitants, which is evident in the Psalms which tell of everything from hills to lions praising God.
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God’s also just another entry in that list.
Tathatgatagarbha.
The majority of the world are not academic linguists.
Language and meaning are driven by popular usage as much, if not more than academic derivation.
Regardless of the “truth”, I think you will find that I expressed a cultural and predominant understanding.
Richard
Edit
I doubt that “F off” means go and have sex.
Your condensation of Gnosticism is short. That necessarily leaves much out, also important aspects. Not a problem for those who know what Gnosticism was but for others, the condensation is not very helpful.
Gnosticism and related ideologies were part of the cultural context when Christianity started to spread. We can see attacks against such thinking in the NT, for example in the letters of John. Early Fathers attacked against Gnosticism and related ideologies even more strongly. For example, much of the ‘Against Heresies’ by Irenaeus deals with the diversity of Gnostic beliefs. Gnosticism was never a single belief structure, rather it was an umbrella name for diverse groups that shared similar type of beliefs.
Gnostic teachers or small groups tried to back their claims by writing pseudo-gospels or comparable types of forged writings. The reasons for the forgery appear to have been economical: Gnostic teachers collected money for letting their followers become part of the elected that had secret knowledge. The secret knowledge was often associated to a largely unknown ‘gospel’ of an apostle or other person who was claimed to have received secret knowledge from Jesus. That is why one of the criteria for belonging to the universal network of catholic churches was that the church accepted the teachings of ‘all the apostles’.
The common beliefs of the Gnostic groups can be read from Wikipedia or other net souce.
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Various gods yes, God no. One is demonstrable via metaphysics, the others are made up.
Vinnie
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I never knew that! I was wondering lately where our word for God came from.
The comment wasn’t directed at me, but I love a good fun fact about the English language—Language in general and its evolution are so fascinating.
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Earth is first of all the domain of God, who is after all its creator.
But God has given domain over the earth to mankind.
So who do we give domain over ourselves and thus by consequence dominion over the earth?
Starting from Adam and Eve, many have given a great deal into the hands of the devil particularly when they have abdicated their own responsibility and blamed him for things. But that is hardly singular and irrevocable. People are many and make different choices. Some choose God, some choose themselves, and there are many other choices.
However, the dominion God has given mankind over the earth is far from unlimited. Clearly the choices of God remain an enormous part of things. Though our ability to mess things up and destroy is far from insignificant.
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Yeah, the “slave to the devil” thing is overdone (sorry, Martin Luther; you went too far). Scripture says we’re slaves to sin, not to Satan, and we’d make piss-poor slaves for him anyway as we’re mostly too selfish to go along with his schemes. C.S. Lewis had it right with The Screwtape Letters where the devil’s only actualy poweris to tempt us, and he has to count on untrustworthy minions to even do that – there’s a reason that Billy Graham talked about “the world, the flesh, and the devil”: the devil is the least of our worries!
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It’s a religious misunderstanding that’s too rare to have featured in QI’s ‘general ignorance’ slot
The supposedly demonstrable one not being Jehovah.
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Understandable complaint but incorrect. The Bible does not offer a univocal philosophical conception of God. The classical attributes are most certainly found amongst the many anthropomorphisms. I suppose if you are a literalist, classical theism would be a difficult pill to swallow without some linguist gymnastic and mental acrobatics. Then again, one has to do that already to make sense of the competing images.
Vinnie
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The same could be said for many other creation deities.
If you are referring to the name or title then you are correct. Jehovah is the Latin form of the verbalisation of the Tetragramatton taken from “I am Who I Am” the answer to Moses; question about what to call God.
There is much dispute about whether the Hebrew God could possibly have any name. God is known by who He is associated with (Abraham, Issac etc) or what He has done. Unfortunately because the Tetragramaton is used so often people have turned it into a name.
Furthermore, God has yet to be Scientifically proven, and probably never will be. However, in terms of identity, if any God has been identified unscientifically Jehovah is as good a name as any for Him (I would rather not pursue the “name” for God any further)
Richard
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Makes sense since God’s eternal qualities and divine nature can clearly be known from creation. Scripture and metaphysics agree on this. So that is entirely consistent and expected to me.
Vinnie
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He is saying the God of the Bible is not the God of classical theism.
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As I understand it, the nature of the Classical Theism is not based upon any relationship or revelation God may or may not have made and as such hold no value. It is a purely human construct.
Richard