Testing The Christian Apologists

That makes zero sense. What's amazing to me is how unbelievers insist on turning whatever the tradition says backwards like this. Where are we going to get the doctrines you say we twist the Bible to fit? Millennia of Biblical scholars derived the doctrines from the Bible itself. Unless you are talking about the RCC and they had a lot of pagan stuff to cram into the Bible. Though even they had their honest Biblical scholars so that they just ended up with a mishmash of biblical and pagan thought. Anyway we twist no scripture, scripture dictates its own interpretation to honest exegetes. The consistency is there to be discovered by honest students, it's not invented.Yes Luther struggled with some parts of the Bible though he was brilliant with most of it and gave us most of what I'm talking about here. No biblical scholar is perfect, it takes all of them together to assemble the whole truth.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What I wrote is a paraphrase of traditional Christian theology. I do not give a damn what any of "the critics" have to say about it, it's none of their business. I do not give a damn who believes or doesn't believe it. It is traditional Christian theology, period, take it or leave it. The Byble is a WHOLE that could only have been put together out of its many separate parts by God Himself. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And just who might these "earliest authors" be? A bunch of heretics or who knows what off-the-wall sources you are referencing?. Everything I've read back to the beginning knows the God of Christianity is the ONE God known by the Jews, THE JEWS TO WHOM GOD GAVE THE BOOK OF GENESIS THROUGH MOSES.The stories did NOT "evolve," only incompetent unspiritual readers or damned heretics would say such a thing. And the fcct that the writings are on separate scrolls is merely a practical matter: scrolls are only a certain size, especially if they are on vellum which is animal skin.Of course the writings are aimed at particular audiences. We all know that. Matthew wrote with the Jews in mind, so did the Letter to the Hebrews, emphasizing Jewish traditions but telling the SAME GOSPEL STORY KNOWN TO ALL using concepts the Jews would understand best. Luke wrote to the Greek speaking world in general where the more specific Jewish concepts would not have been understood as well. BUT IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME ACCOUNT. It's INANE to break it all up as you do, just plain MORONIC. When missionaries translate the Byble for various tribal peoples they use terms that reflect the cultural meaning of the concepts they want to get across. If it is done correctly and sensitively THIS DOES NOT AFFECT THE MESSAGE GIVEN Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are aping some upstart modern revisionists. We know who wrote the Byble accounts and we've known since the very beginning. Yes some of them took material from others, why not? Their aim was to present the llfe and teachings of Jesus Christ to different audiences and why not use what was already available, in fcct it helps their cause. Your stuff is heretical revisionism by unbelievers who have no true understanding of the Byble.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Since your "reality" contradicts two thousand years of the deep spiritual theology of believers, your "reality" is nothing but invented bullcrap.

Thugs has not said anything that contradicts the TRVE meaning of the Byble but your lltrrallst context-blind revisionism does.

Oh yes indeed the context of Geneis IS Romans and Genesis is the context of Romans in turn. That's what you concretizing context-blind lltralists don't get.But really the worst thing you all do is put yourself about two thousand years of honest Byble exegetes. That is really dlsgvsting.

You can't put the text above them, all you can do is put your own reading of the text above theirs and that's where you are arrogant as well as context-blind.I never said anything about "lockstep" -- it's overall consensus over the centuries. If the reader has the Holy Spirit he'll understand the text the way others who have the Holy Spirit understand the text. Not exactly but just about.

Thugsy, why why why do you talk this way? Believing does not lead us to stop using our minds. Belief shows us things we wouldn't otherwise know about that's all, by believing the Biblical testimony in our case. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." Faith gives us a different kind of knowledge than observation of the physical world does, that's all, knowledge of the invisible worlds, but we can think about this knowledge the same way we think about physical knowledge. I wish you'd stop giving believers a bad name this way: we don't stop thinking.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Phat often implies that thinking is at odds with belief and I'm saying it's not. Your opinion about what kind of thinking believers do isn't relevant. But basically we acquire knowledge of God and other "things unseen" by believing the Biblical witnesses, and we grow in knowledge of all these things by studying them.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'mtalkingabout objective critical thinking. The amazing certainty with which you and others assert such emptyheaded irrational biases that have no evidence for them whatever is certainly impressive coming from someone who thinks he believes in scientific rational thought.

No. Objective critical thinking. You just get your head tied in knots when the ubject is omethijg beyond the senses but that's your own problem.

Meekness is the spirit of submission to God.
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I don't claim to have any of those fruits of the Spirit to any great degree but I do know by your challenge that what you think meekness is isn't meekness. Moses was the meekest man ever on earth scripture says and yet he led the whole people of Israel. So what made him meek? His spirit of submission to God. He followed God's will, not his own. I don't do that nearly enough but I do ask God about all kinds of things in my life all the time. I wish I did it more because He'd save me from some messes I get myself into when I don't do it enough.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sticking to the subject of apologetics seems to have been too hard so as often happens the thread is more about the usual Christian-nonChristian arguments, whether there could have been a talking snake for instance.Apologetics within the traditional Christian context is nothing other than the attempt to spell out the theological implications of the biblical truths, and this accusation that the apologists are a bunch of liars is just so far outside the traditional context there's no point in taking it seriously. I don't even know how we'd argue it. The apologist is trying to address the traditional understanding of the Bible. The objectors tend to deny the traditional understandings of the Bible so that's what the discussion is really about in the end.Just one other thing: different views of the Bible or any other source of religious teaching can have their own apologetics, such as Catholic apologetics for instance, in which they use the Bible to defend the Catholic system of interpretation against traditional Protestantism. The different apologetic contexts could also be discussed but that didn't happen on this thread which was about the traditional Protestant viewpoint.But I was in the middle of a discussion with Tangle when this Summary came up, and I'd like to finish that here too: Not if God really is the author of the Bible. You can arrive at that assessment objectively from studying the claims of religions in general, as I did, or by considering the internal consistency of the Bible that transcends the individual minds of those who put it into writing as I also did. That's an objective assessment that leads many to conclude that the Bible is God's own Word or revelation to us. Yes it's arrived at objectively. Of course it is. And that leads to faith in its revelation and once you have that you continue thinking objectively about it. Critically too in terms of assessing different views of it and different theologies derived from it. There is no cessation of critical objective thinking.Then faith really does lead one to knowledge that can't be had any other way because you accept the revelations of the Bible and followe them out. Denying them will of course just cut off that kind of knowledge. Studying the Bible IN FAITH reveals things about reality we would otherwise not know and once we know the Bible is actual revelation of such truths then it leads us to further truths. If you deny all this of course, or any of it, you'll never learn any of these things, these revelations of spiritual matters beyond our senses. Science is all about the physical world and has absolutely nothing to say about spiritual reality. You can think objectively and critically within either context. Not so if you have a reliable source of information about it to start with, which I claim the Bible gives us (and no other source), as I say above. Once you have such a reliable source of knowledge of things spiritual and divine then you can think objectively and critically about it and about the various apologetics based on it. We'd have to get into some detail about what you mean here for me to have an opinion about the truth of it.

And when it is true, as the Bible is, then apologists have their work cut out for them as their job is to show its consistency and draw out all the implications of a divine work.