I’ve never understood how a person can both follow science and have faith in the supernatural. But this forum is a good source of answers.
Have you read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?
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St Roymond,
we usually cross reference in the bible in order to ensure that interpretation is actually Gods revelation. We know that God doesnt only reveal Himself to us with written words…and the bible clearly shows many examples where God revealed Himself to His writers in person or in vision.
It should come as no suprise to you St Roymond that some of those writers were the Apostle Paul, the apostle John and, the apostle Peter.
Now the interesting thing about the apostle Peter…he knew Christ personally. So if an individual who knew Christ personally writes the following you have a big theological problem!!!
4For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell,a placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;c 7and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.
You appear to refuse to accept biblical cross referencing as evidence for the correct interpretation of scripture.
Given you also claim to be a strict follower of the scientific method, how exactly do you manage to maintain any sense of legitimacy in your beliefs with that glaring inconsistency? Its ludicrous.
Mr Singh, nice to meet you. I’ve appreciated much of what you’ve posted on other threads. I think that you are thoughtful. However, I don’t get what is here.
If we look at Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao (all atheists), and compare their victims’ numbers (tens of millions) to a few thousand in N Ireland and the Spanish Inquisition–and it seems like we humans all try to justify belief in an absolute (not God; just our own position) enough to kill plenty of folks. People are people the world over. One journalist wrote that his being captured by a non religious group in Syria was scarier than by the religious one–at least the religious one had rules. And isn’t it a bit raw to compare radicalized terrorists to mom and pop, Mother Theresa, GK Chesterton, Gandhi and Mennonite types, who use faith with all the more zeal to protect the innocent?
And yet …I think that.it is only by the grace of God I have not been born in circumstances that make me hate. We all could be that way.
Thanks.
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And when that happens the text tells us so. You seem to be arguing for license to decide God used a vision just because that makes things convenient to you.
Only in your imagination – or to be more precise, only in terms of arbitrary standards that are not drawn from scripture but imposed on it.
In English? Absolutely!
And even in the original languages it is a useful but insufficient tool.
I don’t bother expending the energy to deal with problems other people make up for me.
You have never presented a rational argument showing that any of us here with whom you disagree actually have these theological problems you claim, you just make the claim as though that meant something – and that’s what’s ludicrous! And it’s even more ludicrous since you refuse to actually address the scriptures apart from your modern worldview that makes insulting demands on God.
People like to claim that religion has been the cause of more deaths than anything, but they totally overlook the fact that the one element of human societies that has led to more deaths than everything else combined is government – in fact governments killing their own people may just be a majority of all deaths humans have ever inflicted on each other. So it’s pretty obvious that anyone blaming religion has an agenda; if they were actually looking at historical causes they’d be attacking government.
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Well, I wonder if that is more just the tool we can get–to emphasize a unit, and make us more dangerous, not more intrinsically evil. I also tend to be high risk if I’m anarchist–so like good old Father Brown said in GK Chesterton’s stories, we are all the deepest, darkest of our neighbors. --or, as Chesterton said in response to the magazine editor’s question about what is wrong with civilization–“Dear Sir, I am.”
I tend to “other” others–and then blame them. That’s what leads to victimization and justification of treating my brother as someone who is not my own, I think.
I could certainly, under the right circumstances, have been a violent person…it is only by the grace of God I was born to peace loving parents and taught to seek forgiveness. I have to be careful that I don’t change into the people I’m concerned about. If I had suffered like many have, I would have seen things differently, I think.
I certainly do learn from Mr Singh, and from you, and others. Thanks
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What? So you dissagree that the apostle Peter had direct revelation from Christ and that Peters writing reflected that revelation?
Is that your defense against 2 Peter 2?
Tell me, what does Peter mean when he talks about the destruction of the earth in Noahs flood and also Sodom and Gomorah below?
Instead of bumbling your way around the problem, address the text directly with a defense…and reference the defense biblically please. If you cannot do do this then you really are facing a mamoth theological dilemma in your claim above.
The Apostle Peter directly refutes any claim that Noahs flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorah are not real historical events. What is worse, he supports the claim it the flood was global. Ironically this very chapter also talks about false teaching.
So where did the apostle Peter get his revelation from, that inspired him to write in chapter 2 of his second book about Noah, thr flood, Lot and Sodom and Gomorah?
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell,a placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;c 7and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.
I cant wait to see you worm your way out of this one!
That’s a pretty broad brushstroke. Not that I’m in a position to contest your claim on its face. But isn’t the claim so generic as to then just blame pretty much everything (except natural disasters themselves) on governments, past and present? And it would be a hard thing to measure, but can anybody doubt that governments have also saved many lives - by providing settings and contexts for peaceful fluorishing? (along the lines of the positive perspective from Romans 13). And no doubt the government that has helped the fluorishing of some is the same government that has been responsible for much death too, and not all governments have been even close to equal, to be sure, when weighed in these balances. But my point is: history is messy. Laying all that is evil at the feet of ‘government’ generally is like saying ‘technology’ is only and ever wicked, and just leaving it at that. Sure … we can point at atom bombs, but most of us can see and concede that those don’t represent the entire story of ‘technology’.
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Jesus calls us to be His witnesses. A witness is one who tells what he knows of the truth. Paul, in I Cor 15, expresses dismay at the possibility of being a false witness “for” God. We must not try to be PR agents inventing better-sounding claims for God. Rather, we must strive for quality and accuracy in our claims, admitting what we don’t know. We also must carefully examine whether our interpretations of the Bible as well as of anything else, such as science, are correct.
The scientific claims invoked to support a young earth completely disregard those guidelines. Most clearly reflect a young-earth advocate taking some bit of information out of context and putting a spin on it that is contradicted by the evidence. No serious scientific study has ever found evidence against an old earth, although it is true that relativity tells us that age depends on the speed of the measurer relative to the speed of light, allowing an “old and young” position as technically valid.
Most dinosaur fossils are individual stray bones, often worn down, reflecting a long time of erosion before being buried. Relatively complete longer-necked vertebrates (especially ones like dinosaurs and birds with lots of neck vertebrae) have some tendency to bend the neck back as tendons stiffen, especially if they dry out. It is not a sign of drowning. Dead animals on land today can show similar bending.
What is observed in the real world is completely incompatible with deposition by a global flood. The sequence of fossils has the first oysters and the first dinosaurs at the same time, with many oysters deposited after the last dinosaur. Oysters are not faster than dinosaurs, they do not live higher in elevation than dinosaurs, and they are not larger than dinosaurs. Both oysters and dinosaurs include plenty of transitional forms, like any well-studied group with a good fossil record. This is not a matter of using “deep time” glasses versus “biblical” glasses. Viewing the world through a biblical perspective leads to the conclusion that God’s wisdom and creativity has required a vast amount of time to display in creation. It does not matter what you think to start with; if you look at the rocks you see a clear history of countless events over long time and no evidence of a global flood.
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In fact, using the ‘glasses’ metaphor … it’s even worse! Because the original people to begin to realize that the geological and fossil evidence couldn’t fit a young-earth time frame probably had ‘young-earth’ glasses on when they began to see this! And certainly the wider culture around them did, since nobody had any exposure to any knowledge which might challenge that yet.
So not only does the “you’re just wearing the wrong glasses” charge not carry any water, but even having the so-called ‘right glasses’ on couldn’t prevent reality from being recognized by all the original founders of modern geology and paleontology (and all quite prior to any robust evolutionary theory being on the scene yet.).
What that says about any of us now if we can’t see evidence for what it is - is all less than flattering. Perhaps the eyewear isn’t functioning so much as ‘glasses’ any more, but more as blinders.
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Everything in verses 4 to 8 was already known before Christ. So what exactly did Jesus say to Peter that was unknown?
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When will you get it into your head that quoting specific naratives in Scripture does not mean that the naratives are historically acurate? Scripture is quoted for its meaning not its historical accuracy!
Stop taking the detils out ouf a passage and read it for what it is trying to say. It is not the history; it is the understanding of how God reacts to the ungodly that matters
Richard
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is that supposed to answer the dilemma or simply reinforce the point that the interpretation it there really was a literal flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorah talk by the Apostle Peter?
I have simply posed a very valid question and that appartently is your answer is it?
Anyone who is christian should be able to answer the text with appropriate referencing from scripture. If a Christian is unable to answer this question, then i wonder where do they get their doctrines from …obviously not from personal study.
So again…please explain from a theological Christian perspective 2 Peter
16For we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 17For He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to Him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”c 18And we ourselves heard this voice from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
Chapter 2
4For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell,a placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;
If Genesis is not a real story, please explain how it is that the Apostle Peter claims it was and that he received revelation directly from Christ?
(EDIT…i had wondered if anyone would attempt to use the claim 1 and 2 Peter werent written by the Apostle…oh well my keen interest in dealing with that nonesense is dashed…but we could deal with it if anyone wants to go down that pathway?)
You are the one that said Peter had a “direct revelation” and I was asking what was said revelation. Peter would have known everything in the verses you quoted before he met Jesus. It was all common knowledge for that time period.
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That reminds me of something pointed out by a Lutheran pastor at an evangelism conference once, that when we read the scriptural accounts of wickedness we should not be saying, “Oh, those horrid people!” but “There but for the grace of God go I!”
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Bill you are again missing the point…your statement above REINFORCES my belief not yours!
Do you not understand that in Peter quoting
- an ancient scripture and
- maintaining that the ancient writer believed in a global flood and the literal desctruction of Sodom and Gomorah…
- that he recieved direct revelation from Christ Himself…
the entire argument against a literal reading of Genesis by TEism is completely demolished.
I really thought someone would at least attempt the defense that scholars believe the Apostle didnt write the epistles (which is true of one of them btw)
I think i know why St Roymond wont refute with the argument " Peter didnt write his epistles"…
its because ST Roymond maintains that bible writers tell us what they mean in their writings and since both books of Peter start out with Peter claiming he is the apostle of Jesus…St Roymond cannot use that argument!
So again, how does a TEist answer the dilemma that 1 and 2 Peter both claim that Peter receieved direct revelation from Christ and also supports the literal reading of Genesis (particularly the flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorah)?
look it may be that there is a perfectly legitimate theological response to this from the TEist perspective. I come to this forums to meet the challenge i face in my own world view head on. I have serious issues i must address that you uys present to me every time im here.
However, on this one, TEists should at least have theological support for their doctrines so that members of that world view can be sure that they really are following appropriate Christian doctrine. This should not be a problem for you guys who are Christian here to answer!
I haven’t read that
There you go with your arbitrary standards again. None of what I quoted just above ahs any bearing on what I said.
Again, only in your imagination.
Peter doesn’t say the flood was global – you have to add that to the text.
Worm my way out of you changing the topic? Why should I bother when all you do is throw out heaps of verses that don’t bear on the question?
The point was that if there was a vision, the scriptures say so, and that you don’t get to claim something was a vision just because it is convenient for your personal worldview.