Do you look at the world where, it’s so evil or self-serving, that you can’t imagine such a world having a benevolent God in it? Or… Do you look at this world where if there is a God, He must be a tyrant?
Neither. I imagined till I was blue in the face. And when I finally drew breath, it returned to me empty. I made every excuse for the ideal, perfect God, for Love the ground of infinite, eternal being. And They didn’t work.
Because THE proof, the toweringly impossible anachronism, which answers your question above or elsewhere as to what ended theodicy once and for all, as I proved to my brilliant, devout, dentist, of 16 years, a few weeks ago, because he asked, is a pious fraud. I told him because I knew it couldn’t touch his faith. But it intrigued him nonetheless.
Um. No. It didn’t. So I asked YOU to explain “howso.”
Undoubtedly.
I already read it. A couple of times.
I’ve encountered it in similar forms before. Here and elsewhere.
I’ve already wrestled with it.
I’m a Christian. I’m tired of being confronted by arguments (and apologists) like this that only work if we all agree on the same assumptions and then blame me for not seeing the argument as convincing or enlightening or upbuilding.
Explain the “howso” yourself, and quite blaming me for your inability to support your claim.
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I am so lost in these thread weaves that I can’t unfurl the original argument compelling the “Howso”! Can you find it and quote it please… more the happy to answer… sorry… newbie and suck at this rapid-fire engagement… borderline getting a pound of flesh removed. But I digress 
I can, but you don’t need me to.
Does your display look something like this but without the blue and yellow markups?
If you click on the thingy I circled in yellow, that will take you to the original source of the clip.
If someone puts a number of clips into one response, they often come from the same post. But they might not.
As long as people use the highlight and quote feature, the little arrow will take you back. You can follow the responses back and back to the OP.
If your AI is capable, you could ask it to compile a transcript of just the the exchanges you want to focus on. Mine is not so far. I have at times copied and pasted what I needed fro a thread into Notepad and then reread it all.
There is also a “quote whole post” feature that most people don’t usually use, because it takes up so much space, or they want to respond only to one point or phrase.
I circled the first step to that tool here in yellow:
And then this:
Trying to keep up with multiple threads can be really confusing. You might give yourself a break and focus on writing in one or two that really interest you.
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Greetings Apistos,
I hope all is well with you. Color me skeptical, but I am naturally curious when one describes that they have proved that the “proof that ended theodicy is a pious fraud” (paraphrase) especially the Christian response to the problem of theodicy. But a bigger curiosity is, if you have proved this fraud of piety, have you gone to the major news or the experts to tell of this great discovery? If you have proved the nature of this pious fraud, you could change the course of human history. Sure as you said, many Christians would still keep their faith, but if your proof created a consensus that shows the fraudulent claims of Christianity, then Christians could just be relegated as a bunch of “flat-earthers” who can be wholesale discredited.
But please dont take my words for sarcasm. I am genuinely curious when one make a claim so bold on a forum where the starting line is a shared consensus about that “pious fraud” that is (somewhat arguably) the basis of our faith. Of course, it does make me wonder what desire you may have to spread this truth you have on this server, and if you do, so be it. But I wonder if that would actually improve anyone’s expierences currently. So I’ll leave that to you whether you find it beneficial when clearly you show admiration and respect of people’s faith without objective evidence on their behalf.
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Trivia: google Marilyn McCord Adams
John 8 The Pericope Adulterae.
Two somewhat ambiguous responses, so I’ll due my best to respond respectfully
So I see she has done a lot of work on the problem of evil, even a series of Gifford lectures culminating into a book called Christ and Horrors. Relating to my post about the Christian response to Theodicy, I presume? Feel feel to elaborate any more, but I’ll definitely add that book to my to read list. She already seems to have some interesting thoughts on it.
Once again I can only guess your specific argument on this text, which I’m doubtful I can create an argument. I’ll leave a note saying that before my time on this server, there was a person who the Pericope Adulterae was his last lifeline to Christ and the Gospels and seemed to have been devastated when he was convinced that it wasn’t in the original manuscript.(Any old members feel free to say something if I incorrectly portrayed @Klax ). So overall I find it very intriguing that 2 people have 2 different responses seemingly dependent on its inclusion in the Gospel. Forgive me if I interpreted incorrectly, it seems I had little to go on.
One last thought, I personally think that the Pericope Adulterae is a beautiful account from Jesus’ ministry that rings consistent with his message throughout the Gosepls and I’m glad we have the story regardless. Once again I’m intrigued by this passage inducing a much different attitude in someone.
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I have to find the reference and quote, but I think it was from N.T. Wright – he talked about the Pericope Adulterae story showing up in a number of copies of different Christian texts. I think he described it as a story in search of a home.
I’ll dig around for his description which is much better than mine.
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I have found this article which had N.T. Wright speaking about John 8 from one of his books: N.T. Wright on the Pericope of the Adulteress
There is a puzzle about this story. It doesn’t really seem to fit here. Chapters 7 and 8—omitting this passage—seem to flow on reasonably well. And, tellingly, the earliest copies of John’s gospel do in fact run straight on from 7:52 to 8:12, missing this story out altogether. At the same time, some manuscripts put it in, but in a different place. Some have it as an extra story after the end of the gospel. Some even place it in Luke’s gospel (and it has to be said that the way the story is told is, if anything, more like Luke than like John). That’s why some translations of the Bible put the story in brackets, or add it to the end as an ‘appendix’.
At the same time, there is something to be said for reading it here, where a lot of manuscripts do have it. John 7 has Jesus teaching in the Temple during the festival of Tabernacles, and the crowds and authorities getting increasingly interested in asking who he is and what he’s about. John 8 has an altogether darker tone, with Jesus accusing the Judaeans of wilfully misunderstanding him, failing to grasp what he’s saying, and wanting to kill him, because they are following the dictates of ‘their father, the devil’. Chapter 8 contains some of the harshest things Jesus is ever recorded as saying. What has happened?
It is as though Jesus has come face to face with the real problem at the heart of the Judaean attitude—to him, to God, to themselves, to their national vocation. We won’t understand the chapter if we think of the Judaeans as simply interested bystanders trying to make sense of a curious teacher newly arrived in town. If we read it like that, Jesus appears irrationally angry and dismissive, and indeed that’s what they seem to have thought too (see verses 48 and 52). John, writing the chapter, is well aware of the impression Jesus was making.
The chapter fits, in other words, with a change of mood brought on by something which has caught Jesus’ attention, and has made him realize just how steeped in their own patterns of thinking his Judaean contemporaries had become—and how devastatingly unlike God’s patterns of thinking they were. So, whether or not the story of the woman and her accusers originally belonged here, it certainly helps us to understand the chapter which it now introduces. The chapter as it now stands begins with people wanting to stone a woman to death; it ends with them wanting to stone Jesus. Perhaps that, too, is trying to tell us something.*
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If you’re unfamiliar with him, James White is a staunch Reformed Baptist elder, who is IMO a knowledgeable defender of the reliability of Scripture, especially the New Testament. He addresses the Pericope Adulterae in a thorough manner in this lengthy Youtube Dr. White Answers Critics on Apologia TV , if you have the interest and endurance to listen. I don’t see a transcript.
- He takes what I consider to be a rational and reasonable approach and concludes that, as great as the Pericope is, that it is not part of the oldest version of John 8.
On the previous topic of suffering, I watched this short Youtube lecture/sermon/ How could a loving God possibly allow so much suffering? It makes no reference to Marilyn McCord Adams, however I gave a transcript of the video to ChatGPT-5, . . . ChatGPT said of it: “That’s a remarkable transcript, Terry — and it actually articulates one of the more balanced contemporary responses to the problem of suffering that I’ve seen presented in a church setting.” I may be nobody, but if ChatGPT was impressed, I’m impressed. It’s only 30:26 minutes long.
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To be honest, I don’t have much stake in the game whether or not to argue whether the Pericope is part of the original letter. To me, I see much wisdom gained in the passage that has consistency even with the rest of John 8 that I literally just say for the first time tonight (I’ll have to pursue that rabbit hole later). I don’t see anything in the text that would be against Christian teaching so the origins don’t entirely bother me. I do like to explore the arguments behind the issue of this text because it seems such a fiery issue with Biblical scholars.
But man, you’re giving me all sorts of homework Terry to catch up on. 2 YouTube videos and more potential books, I’m getting my Sunday all filled up now!
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