katabole vs. themelios: Will the real foundation please be laid...

[Doc]

Hey Molly!

I'm interested in hearing your specific ideas on Genesis 1-3, that is, the answers you have to the questions you posted.

How about I do you one better and let you read the end result of the answers to those questions?

I will soon be posting a narrative that will sum up my conclusions.

I'll let you know when it's up.

As promised.

Hey Doc!

Why would there be a literal tree with literal fruit that bestows knowledge of good and evil?

In short order, you will have my answer.

Here it is.

Posting that version of the creation account, while summing up your take on the creation narrative, doesn't really explain how you arrived at the conclusions you present.
 
I know of another Christian writer who uses the paradigm or axiom of "literal whenever possible", and uses the concordant literal version, yet comes to opposite conclusions on some of the points. For example, he does not believe that the scripture teaches free will, which you clearly do. He also does not believe that God took a risk by placing the Trees in the midst of the Garden, but rather that this was his plan all along, although he would agree with you that these were all literal things.

I also meant to answer another of your questions from the previous post, but I see now I'm going to have to go back and look to see which one it was. Back in a bit once I find it.

[Eleutheros]

Part 2

So what does katabole mean in English?

That is a very good question.

I am not a Greek scholar and so like you I have to research what others have written and what I found is debate.

However, in any debate certain facts, which, you remember, facts are one kind of truth, emerged.

The first is that the translators of the Septuagint used the word katabollo to translate Hebrew words that mean destruction, degradation, decay, disintegration, overthrow, and a few others.

Hence, it is associated not with 'building upon' but in 'tearing down'. It is a word with a negative meaning.

The second is that themelios is used in the Septuagint as well and it is always used to translate words that mean exactly what we mean when we say 'foundation'.

Hence it is associated with the concept of laying something down for the purpose of building upon it. It is a word with a positive meaning.

And the third fact is that katabollo derives from two Greek words kata which means 'down' and bollo which means 'to cast'. So katabollo, from which katabole is derived, means to 'down-cast' which is an idea that is quite far removed from the idea of laying a foundation.

I also found where Origen had this to say of katabole:

"καταβολη, which has been very improperly translated into Latin by "constitutio;" for in Greek καταβολη signifies rather "dejicere," i.e., to cast downwards… From this it follows, that by the use of the word a descent from a higher to a lower condition, shared by all in common, would seem to be pointed out" (De Principiis, III.4).

Interesting thought when one considers the turning of The Adam in the Garden.

Of course, there is the fact that Saint Augustine is (in)famous for his preference of the Latin translations over the original Greek saying that he actually hated Greek. Which is understandable, given that he had an agenda and the Latin supported it much better than the Greek did, even as Origien pointed out that the Latin translation of katabole did not align well with the Greek usage.
This preference of the Latin over the Greek was also the course that the KJV interpreters took when they were tasked with making the KJV translation align with the much preferred, relatively new, highly logical, systematic, hell-based theology of John Calvin, against what The Words actually taught.

OK. So, is there a single English word that can convey to our minds what katabole does- for it does not mean 'foundation'?

Well I found this article and from it I quote (italics are mine):

To appreciate this 'concordant' method (of transaltion), we will examine the word  [katabolE], commonly translated "foundation." One is confronted with a difficulty at the very outset. Another word is also translated "foundation." It is  [themelios]. This word has a much better right to be thus translated. Most Greek words are members of a large family. The nearest relative, the father of this word for "foundation," means "to place"  [tithEmi]. That it really includes the thought of founding is witnessed by the context of each occurrence. It is "upon a rock" (Matt.7:25; Luke 6:48), it keeps company with "rooted" (Eph.3:17), "settled" (Col.1:23), 'strengthen' (1Peter5:10). Every occurrence of the word itself, without exception, bears out for the meaning of "foundation." It is "built" (Luke 6:49; Rom.15:20; 1 Cor.3:12; Eph.2:20). It is "laid" (Luke 6:48; 14:29; 1 Cor.3:10,11). It is part of a prison (Acts 16:26), a temple (Eph.2:20), a city wall (Rev.21:14-19). There can be no other conclusion that  [themelios] means "foundation."
But  [katabolE], the word under study, has no such evidence to support its claim to this meaning. Its nearest relative,  [kataballO], is generally translated "cast down" (2 Cor.4:9; Rev.12:10). The context of 2 Cor. 4:9 shows that it cannot mean "built up. Neither would heaven rejoice of Satan's being "founded" when he is defeated (Rev.12:10).
The evidence for the exact force of this expression is multiplied many times if it is separated into its elements. Its elements are DOWN-CAST, and the Greek has found its way into English in the word catabolism. The element DOWN brings in two hundred witnesses, while CAST commands over fifty. These may be called its near relatives. DOWN-CASTing is a strange and unlikely word for 'foundation'. It does not suggest building up, but casting down. By testing this new thought in all the contexts, DOWN-CASTing means 'disruption', not 'foundation', as, for example, in Eph. 1:4...

(There was an interlinear text 'picture' that was supposed to paste here to illustrate Eph 1:4 but I couldn't figure out how to get it onto this page. Please follow the link above to see the whole article)

So, 'disruption' is the best single English word to use every place katabole appears.

Even in this strange verse where katabole is used in this phrase katabole spermatos

Heb 11:11 …Sarah herself received dunamis (power) to 'disrupt seed' katabole spermatos.

For we now know that the process of conception involves the 'death' of that lucky male sperm and the subsequent catabolizing or 'breaking down' of it, once inside the ovum, in order to release the DNA.

And it shouldn't seem strange that something like this knowledge of how a human is conceived could be known by the writer of Hebrews because it was known that, "…If a kernel of grain, (seed) falling into the earth, should not be dying, it is remaining alone, yet if it should be dying, it is bringing forth much fruit"-Jesus. (John 12:24 CLV).

As a side note I mentioned that I use the Concordant Literal Version in my studies because it is the only one to dare and use the truthful word choice for katabole, 'disruption'. Even Rotherman and Young don't dare to touch this very sacred mis-translation: And so, at the least, the foundation of Calvinism is kept alive in our thoughts, despite that we are witnessing the dissolution, in our thoughts, of everything else he said was truthful, especially that peculiar hell he caused to come into our thinking -and that in our lifetimes because of the work human's like you are doing here on Tentmaker.

And that is why I am still here, despite foreknowing that the way of thinking that domintes here on Tentmaker- a way of thinking  Doc so well presented, thank you- would lead many of you to dismiss me and maybe even scoff, even if you didn't do it publicly, once it was perceived that I was circumspectly arguing for a literal translation of Genesis. (Love that word, Doc!)

I say 'foreknew' because it is a truth that, for the way of thinking that is in those who accept that truth is plural in nature, there can be no acceptance of the thought that truth is singular in nature.

However, there is the truth that the majority of you are well acquainted with the logic I've used here. It is the very same logic you yourselves use to disprove the KJV interpretation. That is, you have learned how to use the KJV against itself; for the KJV is a very inaccurate translation. And by this you prove to the world, from the original languages, that Jesus is truly the savior of ALL men, especially those who believe! A-men!

So, to sum up the truth's I've presented here, 'disruption' is concordant with katabole everywhere katabole appears and is a good word to convey the original writers intent, including all those very much depended upon mis-translated verses in Revelation and Ephesians, used to 'prove' the intended conclusion of the KJV interpreters that Jesus was crucified from the 'foundation' of the world.

Jesus was crucified from the disruption of the world, not it's founding.

Eph 1:3-4 (CLV) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who blesses us with every spiritual blessing among the celestials, in Christ, according as He chooses us in Him before the disruption of the world, we to be holy and flawless in His sight..

Rev 13:8-9 (CLV) And all who are dwelling on the earth will be worshiping it, everyone whose name is not written in the scroll of life of the Lambkin slain from the disruption of the world. If anyone has an ear, let him hear.

Rev 17:8 (CLV) The wild beast which you perceived was, and is not, and is about to be ascending out of the submerged chaos, and to be going away into destruction. And marvel shall those dwelling on the earth, whose names are not written on the scroll of life from the disruption of the world, when they observe the wild beast, seeing that it was, and is not, and will be present.

Now gentle readers you are in a conundrum. I know that, here on Tentmaker, the foundation of a lot of your thoughts is built upon the idea that Jesus was crucified from the foundation of the world, not it's disruption. And it is possible that, right now, some of you have perceived that your foundations are being shaken for the evidence I've just presented.

So what else is new?

How many of you here agonized over what the KJV said about hell as the truth of UR dawned on you?

How many of you put up a fight, first, before perceiving the truth?

How many of you understood UR almost immediately because of what you had grasped of truth about the character of your God, despite the 'truths' in the KJV Bible?

How many of you felt free once you grasped the truth of UR?

Well, this is no different.

Because the only real question left to answer is, when was the katabole kosmos? When was the 'disruption of the world'?

Of course my answer is in the Garden, when The Adam turned.

You may have a different answer. But, whatever it is, it should not be drawn from the erroneous conclusion that Jesus was crucified from the foundation of the world implying that God knew, as a fact, before he created The Adam that they were going to 'fall'. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I would like to thank all of you who participated in this discussion, especially you, Doc. You were bold and fearless.
You were all stellar in arguing for your beliefs. I thank you for the good spirit you all showed even when you perceived that I was arguing for something that most of you don't believe in, that is, that Genesis was intended to be read literally-only And for the other things.
I hope that I was perceived by you as having at least as good a spirit as I perceive you had.

And Molly,

I thank you personally and publicly for being the one Tentmaker who was bold enough to express the minority opinion. (Are you the only one?!?) Your posts were well received by me and much appreciated  )

And so Tentmakers, don't believe everything you think! I know I don't.

And be good!

It is, after all, what Your Father, God, originally intended for you to be!

Dennis!

[Doc]

Dennis,
I have found nothing in particular in these last few posts that I particularly disagree with you on, aside from the conclusion that the "fall" was not foreknown. I also use the CLV, and think that the KJV is a stinker of a translation, although as you point out, it doesn't always get it wrong. As I just pointed out in a previous post, there is another writer I am familiar with who also uses the CLV, is also UR, but comes to the opposite conclusion as you do on the issues of free will and on the foreknowledge of the "fall". So that can't be merely an issue of translation. While your word study on Katabole and Themelios was a good and instructive one, I think your conclusion of when the Katabole was, is perhaps less certainly demonstrable.

Here are the first two verses of Genesis from the CLV:

Gen 1:1 Created by the Elohim were the heavens and the earth.
Gen 1:2 Yet the earth became a chaos and vacant, and darkness was on the surface of the submerged chaos. Yet the spirit of the Elohim is vibrating over the surface of the water.

Then the familiar creation account begins. Notice that the Adam was one of the last things created after this point, whether one's view is of six literal days or six figurative days. On a literal reading of Genesis 1 then, I would conclude that the Katabole occurred right there in Genesis 1:2, before the creation of Adam (or the rest of recognizable creation), and before the fall.

[Molly]

Dear Eleutheros, my computer is very slow today so I cannot say everything I would like to say.

Thank you so much for that study you did on the two words.  I have been tearing my hair out for a long time over this because although I was given the revelation, I was not given the words.

Katabollo, to cast down, I have been dancing around that concept for a long time, now, but I didn't realize it appears where you have shown it to appear.  Tell me, then, is Adam the lamb slain from the casting down of the world?

If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me.  Why is that?

I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.  Who is that?

And, who are we?


The whole book is about the Lord Jesus, isn't it?  Our brother, our Redeemer, our kinsman, the image of the invisible God, the second Adam.  If you have done this to the least of my brothers, you have done it to me.


2And the LORD said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod.

 3And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.

 4And the LORD said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand:

 5That they may believe that the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee.

--Exodus 4

[Doc]

Dennis,

Regarding more specifically some of our earlier conversation, I'd appreciate some explanation from you on the literal interpretation of this selection from Genesis: (CLV)

Gen 3:13 And saying is Yahweh Elohim to the woman, "What is this you do? "And saying is the woman, "The serpent lured me and I am eating.

Who or what is the serpent? Are we to believe that this was an actual, literal serpent? If so, why?

Gen 3:14 And saying is Yahweh Elohim to the serpent, "As you do this, most cursed are you of every beast, and of all field life. On your torso shall you go, and soil shall you eat all the days of your life.

So, the serpent originally had legs and feet and/or wings. After this point, the serpent was made to crawl on its belly instead. Does this lend itself more to a literal interpretation, or an allegorical one?

Gen 3:15 And enmity am I setting between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall hurt your head and you shall hurt his heel.

In what sense can 3:15 be taken literally?

Gen 3:16 And to the woman He says, "Multiplying, yea, multiplying am I your grief and the groaning of your pregnancy. In grief shall you bear sons. "Yet by your husband is your restoration, and he shall rule over you.

What is the literal sense of the above verse (aside from the multiplication of grief and groaning of pregnancy)?



Gen 3:22 And saying is Yahweh Elohim, "Behold! The human becomes as one of us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he stretch forth his hand, moreover, and take of the tree of the living, and eat and live for the eon--!

The above was the verse that I was referring to when I was talking about the tree of life, but it says live for the eon, not forever. Obviously, God did not want them living for the eon in their new state of being as "one of us, knowing good and evil". I don't have a specific question for you on this one, but I'd be interested in your take on its meaning.

[Molly]

Dennis,
I have found nothing in particular in these last few posts that I particularly disagree with you on, aside from the conclusion that the "fall" was not foreknown. I also use the CLV, and think that the KJV is a stinker of a translation, although as you point out, it doesn't always get it wrong. As I just pointed out in a previous post, there is another writer I am familiar with who also uses the CLV, is also UR, but comes to the opposite conclusion as you do on the issues of free will and on the foreknowledge of the "fall". So that can't be merely an issue of translation. While your word study on Katabole and Themelios was a good and instructive one, I think your conclusion of when the Katabole was, is perhaps less certainly demonstrable.

Here are the first two verses of Genesis from the CLV:

Gen 1:1 Created by the Elohim were the heavens and the earth.
Gen 1:2 Yet the earth became a chaos and vacant, and darkness was on the surface of the submerged chaos. Yet the spirit of the Elohim is vibrating over the surface of the water.

Then the familiar creation account begins. Notice that the Adam was one of the last things created after this point, whether one's view is of six literal days or six figurative days. On a literal reading of Genesis 1 then, I would conclude that the Katabole occurred right there in Genesis 1:2, before the creation of Adam (or the rest of recognizable creation), and before the fall.

I've noticed that, too, in Genesis 1:2.

But don't confuse emptiness and desolation, tohu and bohu, with katabole.

The first is the problem, and the second just might be the solution.

[Doc]

I suppose that's fair enough.

I still think that this (Gen 1:2) is potentially a better description of katabole than what came later with the expulsion. I think it's interesting to note that the heavens earth were created, then it became a chaos and vacant, and then God created what we have now. We can only speculate from what we have here, but this is perhaps an indication of some type of life before Adam.

[Tim B]

Hey Dennis,

I actually do enjoy the Concordant Literal Version as well. I tend to trust the CLV, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible (I've got this one on my iPod Touch   ), and Young's Literal Translation the most, for accuracy. Rotherham's Emphasized uses age-lasting/age-abiding rather than eternal, and so does Young's Literal (which is why I like that one too). Rotherham's also correctly translates Matthews 25:46 as "age-lasting correction" as opposed to "eternal punishment". Over all, these three tend to be, in general, much more accurate than other translations.  

I'm familiar with Young's. It's a bit stilted, but as you said He did accurately translate 'aion'.

Rotherham's, eh? I will look into this one as I've never heard of it till now. Thanks for sharing!

As for your questions, I would enjoy looking into answering some of them. I'd also need to read Genesis 1-3. I haven't read that all the way through in quite a while. However, I'm not sure how soon I'll be getting back to ya, as I can be kind of lazy, and more importantly I'm leaving for my vacation today and may not have internet access (*sniffle*).

Love be with ya! 

Well, you just have a really great vactaion! I know I just did!

Here's an idea: Why don't you print out the questions and discuss them with your traveling companion (are you married?), especially if you are driving. You'd likely learn a thing or two in the process! As you wish!

God speed you into a good time!

Dennis!

Hey man, it's been a long time waiting, but I finally got around to replying to this message. To answer your question: I'm not married. Just about to turn 21, but I haven't found "the one" yet. lol

I tend to study alone (in person, I mean.) I study with lots of people on here, as in, share my thoughts and stuff.  Not that I don't want to study with others (outside of the internet), but most people I know either don't agree with UR or don't study much themselves. I can talk to my parents (my mom believes in UR and my dad more or less does), but they don't study a whole lot like I do. And even though my sister believes in UR she doesn't study the Bible or UR very much. So, basically, I'm out of luck, aside from my internet friends (currently speaking).

[Molly]

I suppose that's fair enough.

I still think that this (Gen 1:2) is potentially a better description of katabole than what came later with the expulsion. I think it's interesting to note that the heavens earth were created, then it became a chaos and vacant, and then God created what we have now. We can only speculate from what we have here, but this is perhaps an indication of some type of life before Adam.

Then where would this fit in?
Who did what when for what purpose?


19For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

 20For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

 21Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

--Rom 8


[For the earnest expectation of the]

"creature" [waiteth]

G2937
κτίσις
ktisis
ktis'-is
From G2936; original formation (properly the act; by implication the thing, literally or figuratively): - building, creation, creature, ordinance.


G2936
κτίζω
ktizō
ktid'-zo
Probably akin to G2932 (through the idea of the proprietorship of the manufacturer); to fabricate, that is, found (form originally): - create, Creator, make.


G2932
κτάομαι
ktaomai
ktah'-om-ahee
A primary verb; to get, that is, acquire (by any means; own): - obtain, possess, provide, purchase.


G2933
κτῆμα
ktēma
ktay'-mah
From G2932; an acquirement, that is, estate: - possession.



Acts 20:28
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

[Eleutheros]

Hey, Doc!

What Jesus did in addressing the Jews gathered around Him, of whom He said "You are the salt of the earth and a light on a hill" was to illustrate the importance of  righteousness, mercy, lieniency and forgivness above the demands of the law, so that they would be the good witness they were intended to be for God to the Gentiles. The very same righteousness, mercy, lieniency and forgivness that works in those Gentiles re-sired by Jehovah to make them a good witness for God to the world today.
And these qualities of  righteousness, mercy, lieiency and forgivness were not contradictory to their understanding of truth, 'spiritual' or otherwise, nor where they innaccurate with regard to their literal reading of scripture, nor where they in conflict with their conscience about what 'those words' (The Law) in scripture meant.

I'm only going to directly address this part, as these exchanges are getting too long for me to keep up with.

As you wish!

I don't really think we're getting anywhere with this long-winded vague sniping back and forth.

Well, then, I will say that I am sorry, Doc. Because a long-winded, vauge, sniper (is this a pun?!?) is not how I wanted to be perceived. Even though I foreknew I wouldn't exactly be embraced and hugged on once I started making my points more saliant. Even as you said, Doc and quite accurately, I was being circumspect.

After all, 'literalist' (as I was surreptitiously labeled, which is an accurate label, by the way, even though I know it wasn't intended to be complimentary) are considered, here, to be immature, even as Gilbert heavily intimated.

I understand the point that this is what Jesus was trying to do,...

Well, that's good. At least now I'm communicating! 

...but, it appeared to them as I suggested, which was the point. They thought they had the truth (the letter/ literal), so they didn't believe the Truth when he was standing right in front of them (the Spirit).

Now there's an axiom if ever I heard one! Actually several all at once!

But, OK. As you wish. I'll not respond to this so we can end our previous conversation, even as you say we're not getting anywhere.

At any rate, I don't disagree that truth can be known at least at some level, and that the (absolute) truth itself is not plural. I do maintain however, that the only possible way that we can know this is by knowing the person who is the Truth (and Way, and Life).

Well, this is certianly interesting! Are you back tracking a bit now on your belief that truth is plural in nature?

Does this mean that I'm making some progress with you?

Or are you just being concillatory?.

Well, semantics won't hide the fact, Doc, that you do truly and of truth believe that truth is plural in nature. As you wish!

For I, too, know Jesus and I know that He is all these things, even as you say. He is the Way in that He is the access to the Father and He is in me and with me on my Journey there as well: He is the Truth because it is His spirit that understands the deep things of God and reveals them to me that I might know the thoughts and therefore, the heart of my God: He is the Life because in Him all things exist even as He made all things and because through my faith in Him I will have life eonian when I am ressurected (Pretty  good for a literalist, eh?)

Anytime we put any knowledge or reason above this, we are guilty of missing the mark, which is exactly what happened to the Jews.

So are you now saying that I'm actually sinning by thinking and using logic, knowledge and reason?!? Just like the Jews did?!? No, of course not. I believe better of you than this… Well, I don't know though, you did interpret something I said earlier to be gnostic. Which, of course, required me to clarify, which I hope I did. But, that could have been my own inability to communicate…

Even so, what I recognize is that this is your 'truth'. Not mine.

So since you stated that you do believe truth is plural in nature, which means that whatever *I* can conclude is a truth, just like whatever you can conclude is a truth, can you accept the truth that I have a different more narrow standard by which I determine truth, that is, that what I understand is derived from a literal interpretetion of The Words?

I wouldn't think so, given that you think I'm sinning by holding to this much narrower less broad way of thinking that uses knowledge, reason and logic to arrive at truth-which the spirit of Jesus in me confirms by giving me peace and understanding to know which thoughts I should let into my heart and which I should reject even as I live from my heart for all to see!

We have to hear with spiritual ears and see with spiritual eyes, or we'll miss the message by not seeing the forest for the trees.

Well, when you can answer my question What is spirit? Then I'll know that at least you can see the forest for the trees and that you know what you're talking about when you say "We have to hear with spiritual ears and see with spiritual eyes..."

Until then I can't afford to trust anyone who says they have something to say 'from the spirit', without something else to compare it with.

And that something else comes from a literal interpretation of The Words exactly because of the narrowing of conclusions I come to know and that I've found to be quite liberating for this literal way of thinking.

Besides, there's just far to many bad humans out there, Doc, with ulterior motives, lying and deceiving in the name of truth, Don'tcha know?

However, most of them become journalists. So that's good. At least they're easily identified. But, there are still some of these humans lurking about in Christendom, many of whom treat the Bible as if it can make anything anybody wants to say a truth as long as you can quote from it and draw a conclusion.

Ever wonder, Doc, where the Saducees got the wrong conclusion that there is no ressurection from the dead, a conclusion Jesus said was in error?

Answer: From the 'Bible'.

Now, I suspect that you have a point to make regarding your thread title, so I'd like to hear you lay out your position so that we can perhaps continue a more meaningful discussion.

Actually I was putting the finishing touches on it even as you were writing this post! Isn't that a hoot!

I'm sorry it took me so long. I was diligently working on it for most of the last 48 hours 'cause I needed to make sure, before I posted it, that it was the truth both factually and in it's conclusions, don'tcha know?

Be good!

Dennis!

[Eleutheros]

Dear Eleutheros, my computer is very slow today so I cannot say everything I would like to say.

I'm sorry for that. I hope it gets better!

Thank you so much for that study you did on the two words.  I have been tearing my hair out for a long time over this because although I was given the revelation, I was not given the words.

I'm very happy that you found it useful for stopping encroaching baldness! *smile*

Katabollo, to cast down, I have been dancing around that concept for a long time, now, but I didn't realize it appears where you have shown it to appear.

Glad to be of assistance.

Tell me, then, is Adam the lamb slain from the casting down of the world?

No Jesus is the Lambkin-the baby lamb. So figured, metaphorically, in The Unveiling because the lamb was the sacrificial animal roasted and eaten whole at the Passover, which festival has a lot to prefigure about the literal sacrifice that was to come.

If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me.  Why is that?

Well, since you ask, The word draw here would better be rendered drag... If I be lifted up I will drag all men unto me.

This is said in the context of the event that took place where Moses was instructed by Jehovah to make a bronze likeness of the serpents He had sent among them for all thier complaining and plotting and to put it up high on a pole, in the middle of the compound, so that anywhere anyone was in the compound, when they were bitten by the firey serpents, they could stop and fixing thier gaze on it, live till the poision in them was dissipated.

Jesus said that He must be lifted up in the same way to become that serpent-on-a-pole for taking upon Himself the sin of all Men and Women. Such that all those who 'fix thier gaze' on Him will live, despite the serpents 'bite'.

But he used the word drag because the forgivness He offers is indeed for all even as all will come to know it; even if some have to be dragged, through the bad consequences of bad choices, to the place where they will find themselves gazing upon his forgivness. And experiencing it they will bow willingly in worship and confess with joy that Jesus is LORD.

It says in The Unveiling that when those in the lake of fire are being tried and proven that they are being so proven in front of Him, thus they are able to observe Him.
I like to ask hell-minded sorts- What expression is on His face for them to see? Triumph? Victory? Is He gloating over them? Or is the look one of compassion and forgivness? Of course they always answer correctly, "Compassion and forgiveness" because they know that if they answer anything else their own hearts would be exposed as hard, even as the hell-minded theologies they hold to teach them to be toward their fellow human.

You see, the compassion and love and forgivness of God is in the face of Jesus such that any human who gazes on it cannot forever endure the weight of the sin they begin to feel in thier spirit before they burst forth in repentance and confession

The Catholics know of this and thus put crucifixes in the center of thier churches.

And that is why I have concluded that forgivness is the most powerful force in the Universe. Love is just the generator that powers it.

I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.  Who is that?

Jesus. He said He was, Himself.

And, who are we?

That is a good one! WE are either one of two types of humans a male or a female. WE are sentient and self-aware (where did that come from?) WE have a conscience which means that WE know what the difference is between good and evil, or what is right and what is wrong (where did that come from?) WE, most of us anyway, persistently and consistently disregard this concscience and do things we know are wrong. WE feel guilt over this and thus spend a lot of time justifying our heart- our thoughts- against what we know is the truth. Therefore, WE are dysfunctional.

WE then must have Someone do something about US, because Good and Right or being Righteous is the right way to be, even if all WE want is to be left alone to do wrong as we feel. Thus, WE have a Savior, because… WE need one, like it or not. He will restore all of US to His Father, the Original Owner and Creator of OUR souls, either through choice, first, even as He foreknows the hearts of those among US and thus knows who will chose to be the first to Believe and thus experience His forgivness and His re-siring of thier spirit. Or later, for those among US who could not or would not choose to be among those first to believe because they love doing wrong things with their sexuality and/or love hurting other humans and/or love lying and perverseness and/or practice deception and/or seek to gain power over other humans, etc. will be restored through a very unpleaseant process that uses a 'fire' to purge their spirit of evil as well as a pruning to remove what is unhealthy. Thus will they, too, come to see their need for a Savior. And experiencing His forgivness as well as His re-siring, will be restored to the Father through Him. Thus will WE ALL be subject to OUR Savior Who will then subject Himself to His Father and thus will The Father be ALL and in ALL of US as we live long, long productive lives as ressurected humans in New Heavens and a New Earth, with direct access to God through but a thought, creating and exploring and building and learning and loving and creating children even as ALL of US will love goodness and righteousness and love the God who made US ALL to resemble Him.
Thus what He intended for us to gain in the Garden will finally be realized because virtuous will be what we are, even as He is and OUR conscience will thus be obeyed, rigorously, even as it continues to tell us what the difference is between right and wrong, good and evil.

And so that is who, I believe, WE are!
 

The whole book is about the Lord Jesus, isn't it?  Our brother, our Redeemer, our kinsman, the image of the invisible God, the second Adam.  If you have done this to the least of my brothers, you have done it to me.

Yes.

2And the LORD said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod.

 3And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.

 4And the LORD said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand:

 5That they may believe that the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee.
--Exodus 4

Yes, that ALL may believe, even if they gotta be dragged to the place where they can.

Be good!

Dennis!

[Doc]

I don't really think we're getting anywhere with this long-winded vague sniping back and forth.


Well, then, I will say that I am sorry, Doc. Because a long-winded, vauge, sniper (is this a pun?!?) is not how I wanted to be perceived. Even though I foreknew I wouldn't exactly be embraced and hugged on once I started making my points more saliant. Even as you said, Doc and quite accurately, I was being circumspect.

After all, 'literalist' (as I was surreptitiously labeled, which is an accurate label, by the way, even though I know it wasn't intended to be complimentary) are considered, here, to be immature, even as Gilbert heavily intimated.

No need for apology. I wasn't saying that you were the only one doing it. We were both going tit for tat over rather long posts, and I was merely observing that our mutual participation in that exercise wasn't getting us anywhere...

 

At any rate, I don't disagree that truth can be known at least at some level, and that the (absolute) truth itself is not plural. I do maintain however, that the only possible way that we can know this is by knowing the person who is the Truth (and Way, and Life).

Well, this is certianly interesting! Are you back tracking a bit now on your belief that truth is plural in nature?

Does this mean that I'm making some progress with you?

Or are you just being concillatory?.

Well, semantics won't hide the fact, Doc, that you do truly and of truth believe that truth is plural in nature. As you wish!

For I, too, know Jesus and I know that He is all these things, even as you say. He is the Way in that He is the access to the Father and He is in me and with me on my Journey there as well: He is the Truth because it is His spirit that understands the deep things of God and reveals them to me that I might know the thoughts and therefore, the heart of my God: He is the Life because in Him all things exist even as He made all things and because through my faith in Him I will have life eonian when I am ressurected (Pretty  good for a literalist, eh?)

  No, not backtracking. I was being facetious about truth being plural in nature, given my remark about truth being a person; therefore that Truth=God="multiple oneness"=plural (e.g. Elohim)

So are you now saying that I'm actually sinning by thinking and using logic, knowledge and reason?!? Just like the Jews did?!? No, of course not. I believe better of you than this… Well, I don't know though, you did interpret something I said earlier to be gnostic. Which, of course, required me to clarify, which I hope I did. But, that could have been my own inability to communicate…

   No, what I'm saying is that putting logic knowledge and reason above the Spirit of truth is missing the mark, not that using those things is...

Even so, what I recognize is that this is your 'truth'. Not mine.

This appears to be saying that there is more than one truth. Did you want to phrase that differently?

So since you stated that you do believe truth is plural in nature, which means that whatever *I* can conclude is a truth, just like whatever you can conclude is a truth, can you accept the truth that I have a different more narrow standard by which I determine truth, that is, that what I understand is derived from a literal interpretetion of The Words?

I wouldn't think so, given that you think I'm sinning by holding to this much narrower less broad way of thinking that uses knowledge, reason and logic to arrive at truth-which the spirit of Jesus in me confirms by giving me peace and understanding to know which thoughts I should let into my heart and which I should reject even as I live from my heart for all to see!

As I pointed out above, I wasn't actually stating that truth (in the sense you actually meant) is plural. Using knowledge, reason and logic is fine; but these things are subject to the Spirit of truth that teaches us all truth, not the other way around. That's all I'm saying. The scripture advises; trust in the Lord with all your heart and not to lean on your own understanding. Our knowledge, reason and logic is limited. What I'm saying is that the Pharisees standard was too narrow, so they missed the larger truth, the big picture.

Well, when you can answer my question What is spirit? Then I'll know that at least you can see the forest for the trees and that you know what you're talking about when you say "We have to hear with spiritual ears and see with spiritual eyes..."

Until then I can't afford to trust anyone who says they have something to say 'from the spirit', without something else to compare it with.

And that something else comes from a literal interpretation of The Words exactly because of the narrowing of conclusions I come to know and that I've found to be quite liberating for this literal way of thinking.

Besides, there's just far to many bad humans out there, Doc, with ulterior motives, lying and deceiving in the name of truth, Don'tcha know?

However, most of them become journalists. So that's good. At least they're easily identified. But, there are still some of these humans lurking about in Christendom, many of whom treat the Bible as if it can make anything anybody wants to say a truth as long as you can quote from it and draw a conclusion.

There are a number of different answers to the question "what is spirit?" Which is why I had asked, in what sense did you mean?

The Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth; The Spirit that is God, who is Love. This goes beyond human reason, knowledge and logic. We must be given spiritual eyes and ears to see this level of Truth. Truth surpasses "fact", and the literal words on a page. The words point to the truth.

Ever wonder, Doc, where the Saducees got the wrong conclusion that there is no ressurection from the dead, a conclusion Jesus said was in error?

Answer: From the 'Bible'.

Which nicely illustrates the point I've been trying to make...

Actually I was putting the finishing touches on it even as you were writing this post! Isn't that a hoot!

I'm sorry it took me so long. I was diligently working on it for most of the last 48 hours 'cause I needed to make sure, before I posted it, that it was the truth both factually and in it's conclusions, don'tcha know?

Be good!

Dennis!

Yes, I realized that right after I posted!

[Doc]

Dennis;

With my last reply out of the way, would you be good enough to go back up and look at post #54 and reply to the questions I had for you there?

[Eleutheros]

Dennis;

With my last reply out of the way, would you be good enough to go back up and look at post #54 and reply to the questions I had for you there?

Hey Doc,

Yesterday I go quite busy and couldn't reply to your questions after I finished my post to Molly. And today my wife has the day off and so I'm spending the day with her.

I should have told you this in a short post yesterday so you wouldn't be left hanging. I'm very sorry I didn't. Will you forgive me?

I will give a reply, of course because your's are the kind of questions I've been wanting to be asked so I can learn from them.

Perhaps tomorrow I can get a reply out. I will certianly try.

In the meantime I do have some time this morning to answer this that you asked me to clarify.

Anytime we put any knowledge or reason above this, (The Spirit of Truth) we are guilty of missing the mark, which is exactly what happened to the Jews.

Even so, what I recognize is that this is your 'truth'. Not mine.

This appears to be saying that there is more than one truth. Did you want to phrase that differently?

  I gotta snicker at us a bit here because I'm slowly begining to perceive that we may actually be of a like mind on several points.

What I am saying here exactly is that this is an axiom that you hold as a 'truth' and that therefore drives your thinking, not mine.

For I am perceived by you as doing exactly as you say I am; putting knowledge and reason above 'the Spirit of Truth'. And that because I am using knowledge and reason and logic to prove my points even while saying that truth is narrow and singular in nature. And boldly so in a place where such a literal way of thinking is considered 'immature' at the least or at worse to be 'missing the mark' which is sinning even as Paul used the word hamartia, a word borrowed from archery to describe sin!

You did say Doc, facetiously or not, in answer to a direct question that you thought truth was plural in nature. Why would you say this if you didn't believe it? I would now say so you could be facetious. Unfortunately that time it was lost to me.

OK. Since then you've been heading away from that answer a bit as you try to communicate your mind.

OK. This is good.

You said this:

...I wasn't actually stating that truth (in the sense you actually meant) is plural. Using knowledge, reason and logic is fine; but these things are subject to the Spirit of truth that teaches us all truth, not the other way around. That's all I'm saying.The scripture advises; trust in the Lord with all your heart and not to lean on your own understanding. Our knowledge, reason and logic is limited. What I'm saying is that the Pharisees standard was too narrow, so they missed the larger truth, the big picture.

I found this quite encouraging and so I will attempt to share my heart, my way of thinking with you, so that you might know me better.

We have a conscience, which is defined as knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and evil (Just like that Tree in Gan Eden was called. I could even go so far as to say that it was 'The Tree of Conscience', An important point in my thinking which I introduce to you here).
And so we know, all of us with no exceptions, when we are doing right and when we are doing wrong. In other words, we know when we are lying or telling the truth; we know when we are engaing in illicit sex and when we aren't and we know that stealing is wrong, etc.
However, specifically, because we have all lied and gained by it, at the expense and to the hurt of others and because we have all been similar victims of such lies the singular nature of truth is lost in us because we all have to deal with the guilt and shame we properly feel- emotions produced in us because we have a conscience. However confession of the wrong is not what we do to alleviate the guilt and that is because of the shame we feel. Instead, what we do is justify ourselves to ourselves and so we lie some more, even to ourselves. And of course we must believe these lies. And that is why many of us become so angry about 'certian' things because when someone gets to close to the lies we 'know' as 'truth' we are at risk of having our shame exosed.

We are thus all dysfunctional. However, some of us are more dysfunctional than others not because they necessarily do more wrong but because of two other things. The first is because of the way many have come to think for the lies that they are both victims of and have perpertrated. These are thus more dysfunctional than those humans who heed their conscience and learn from it not to do those things they know are wrong. However even these have done wrong things even as through them they've allowed the consequences of these wrong things to teach them to do right. So, these do develop a way of thinking that is more in line with truth even as the only knowledge of right and wrong that they have comes from their conscience.

In other words, I could take that pen called 'Disobedient' that Paul said God coralled us all into and re-label it 'Dysfunctional' and thus better convey the idea of what I belieive Paul meant.

There is a lot of other scripture to back this idea up. For instance, you can discover your thoughts on these things by simply listing all 32 of the verses where 'conscience' appears in the NT and reading them in thier context. The CLV is really good at fleshing out from the Greek these ideas I've presented.

Now, even though we all have a standard within us that we can use to guage truth, our conscience, it becomes an inadequate standard because there is nothing we can do to rid ourselves completely of the guilt and shame we constantly feel for the wrong things we have done. All we can know is either more or less guilt depending upon how much and what kind of bad things we've done. For there is a difference in degree between how we are made to feel for murder and lying and stealing and rape, etc. And the more you do these bad things to do and the more bad they are the more you lie to yourself and believe your lies such that eventually your conscience becomes cauterized to even what truth you have. And so there are 'good' and 'bad' humans, but, in a subjective way.

But, not in a really truthful way. Even as God is good.

The sacrifice by Jesus of Himself litrally 'for the sins of the world' is needed because the universe has Goodness and Right built into it. And I mean that quite literally even as some of the conclusions from quantum physics are making it known.

And so to violate this Goodness and Right is to invite Justice in to correct what is wrong. C.S. Lewis calls this 'the magic' and 'the deep magic' built into the universe that Aslan created. A true allegory of the truth that speaks to the hearts of so many humans because it is of truth. Even more than he himself might have known when he wrote it.

And so two things happen to us, according to The Words, when we hear the Gospel that Jesus has accomplished the forgivness of our sins, assuming we respond in faith to this meassge, which all good humans will do with 'good' being defined rather subjectively as how much a human follows the conscience or truth he/she has and for what has developed in their heart which is the way of thinking that is in them.

Those two things are a cleansed conscience which then becomes our responsibility to maintain and a 're-siring' of their spirit to create a new human with what John calls the sperm of Jehovah. A human that cannot continue to sin sin because this human is now, literally, a child of Jehovah just like any human conceived from a man's deposit of sperm makes that human his child with his characteristics.

I have concluded that this 'sperm is what the CLV calls holy spirt. And it is the spirit of Jesus which is the spirit of truth.

Thus are we really and truly and quite literally 'begotten anew' even as Jesus said we must be.

And where does a new baby begin to grow? Inside! Exactly where Jesus said the Kingdom of God is! (The Greek He used makes if clear that He meant the Kingdom of God is inside of us as opposed to outside of us not 'from within us' which idea the Greek has a word for that wasn't used. And so, once more, any cocnlusions drawn for thinking that that Jesus said the kingdom of God is 'within' us instead of 'inside' of us will be erroneous even as the transaltion is erroneous).

Now the end of all this is, Doc, that what the Beleiver has now is a cleansed conscience and the ability to be good and thus do right consistently. And so with all this right-doing were doing and by which we maintain a clean conscience besides the confessing of our shortcommings to each other when we realize that we did 'miss the mark' or 'fell short'  of 'the target', a new and more accurate and therefore narrower way of thinking develops in us even as this new human grows inside of us.

Which means a more accurate standard of truth develops in us. It is even the spirit of truth which is from Jesus.

And so we have an accurate gauge for truth developing inside of us even as we have holy spirit inside of us united with our spirit, actively working through our clean conscience and our heart, which is the sum total of our thoughts (very important point that!) and which works in tandem with our logic and reason and knowledge (very important that because none of us know everything and some things we know are inaccurate) to verify the accuracy or truth of a thought or conclusion someone else may present to us or that we may even think of ourselves!

Thus I am not elevating logic and knowledge and reason above the spirit of truth that I am becoming for *I* can still think wrong thoughts and draw wrong conclusions from those thoughts. What I am saying is that that the truth can be known in any situation where fasity exists by using logic correctly with reason and corrected knowledge which is prompted by correcting insight from the spirit inside me to confirm that what I am hearing is either of truth or of lies even as that standard by which I understand truth narrows, as it develops in me, to what you called, intrestingly enough, 'absolute' truth, even though all truth is, by nature absolute and immutable.

Paul repeatedly warned of those who would come with lies, in the name of Jesus, to deceive and lead away from the truth those that could be led away.

And that is even as I see it today. For the truth I know to be truth is not found in a way of thinking that broadens our thoughts to be able to accept whatever anyone says is truth simply because they can quote a verse and from their way of thinking, draw a conclusion, saying it came from revelation. But, because what I perceive came from that narrowing of my thoughts to understand what is the correct way of thinking even as Paul said that such a way exists.

"...God, Who wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth. For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and mankind, a Man, Christ Jesus, Who is giving Himself a correspondent Ransom for all (the testimony in its own eras)..."

And

"...Let no one be seducing (you to believe lies ed.) with empty words, for because of these things the indignation of God is coming on the sons of stubbornness. Do not, then, become joint partakers with them (of thier sins), for you were once darkness, yet now you are light in the Lord. As children of light be walking (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), testing what is well pleasing to the Lord.


There is more I can say about what you may mean about what you called the plurality of truth but my precious one needs my attention now and so for now, I say again as always,

Be good!

It's what you were created to be!

Dennis!

[Gilbert]

Dennis;

With my last reply out of the way, would you be good enough to go back up and look at post #54 and reply to the questions I had for you there?

Hey Doc,

Yesterday I go quite busy and couldn't reply to your questions after I finished my post to Molly. And today my wife has the day off and so I'm spending the day with her.

I should have told you this in a short post yesterday so you wouldn't be left hanging. I'm very sorry I didn't. Will you forgive me?

I will give a reply, of course because your's are the kind of questions I've been wanting to be asked so I can learn from them.

Perhaps tomorrow I can get a reply out. I will certianly try.

In the meantime I do have some time this morning to answer this that you asked me to clarify.

Anytime we put any knowledge or reason above this, (The Spirit of Truth) we are guilty of missing the mark, which is exactly what happened to the Jews.

Even so, what I recognize is that this is your 'truth'. Not mine.

This appears to be saying that there is more than one truth. Did you want to phrase that differently?

  I gotta snicker at us a bit here because I'm slowly begining to perceive that we may actually be of a like mind on several points.

What I am saying here exactly is that this is an axiom that you hold as a 'truth' and that therefore drives your thinking, not mine.

For I am perceived by you as doing exactly as you say I am; putting knowledge and reason above 'the Spirit of Truth'. And that because I am using knowledge and reason and logic to prove my points even while saying that truth is narrow and singular in nature. And boldly so in a place where such a literal way of thinking is considered 'immature' at the least or at worse to be 'missing the mark' which is sinning even as Paul used the word hamartia, a word borrowed from archery to describe sin!

You did say Doc, facetiously or not, in answer to a direct question that you thought truth was plural in nature. Why would you say this if you didn't believe it? I would now say so you could be facetious. Unfortunately that time it was lost to me.

OK. Since then you've been heading away from that answer a bit as you try to communicate your mind.

OK. This is good.

You said this:

...I wasn't actually stating that truth (in the sense you actually meant) is plural. Using knowledge, reason and logic is fine; but these things are subject to the Spirit of truth that teaches us all truth, not the other way around. That's all I'm saying.The scripture advises; trust in the Lord with all your heart and not to lean on your own understanding. Our knowledge, reason and logic is limited. What I'm saying is that the Pharisees standard was too narrow, so they missed the larger truth, the big picture.

I found this quite encouraging and so I will attempt to share my heart, my way of thinking with you, so that you might know me better.

We have a conscience, which is defined as knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and evil (Just like that Tree in Gan Eden was called. I could even go so far as to say that it was 'The Tree of Conscience', An important point in my thinking which I introduce to you here).
And so we know, all of us with no exceptions, when we are doing right and when we are doing wrong. In other words, we know when we are lying or telling the truth; we know when we are engaing in illicit sex and when we aren't and we know that stealing is wrong, etc.
However, specifically, because we have all lied and gained by it, at the expense and to the hurt of others and because we have all been similar victims of such lies the singular nature of truth is lost in us because we all have to deal with the guilt and shame we properly feel- emotions produced in us because we have a conscience. However confession of the wrong is not what we do to alleviate the guilt and that is because of the shame we feel. Instead, what we do is justify ourselves to ourselves and so we lie some more, even to ourselves. And of course we must believe these lies. And that is why many of us become so angry about 'certian' things because when someone gets to close to the lies we 'know' as 'truth' we are at risk of having our shame exosed.

We are thus all dysfunctional. However, some of us are more dysfunctional than others not because they necessarily do more wrong but because of two other things. The first is because of the way many have come to think for the lies that they are both victims of and have perpertrated. These are thus more dysfunctional than those humans who heed their conscience and learn from it not to do those things they know are wrong. However even these have done wrong things even as through them they've allowed the consequences of these wrong things to teach them to do right. So, these do develop a way of thinking that is more in line with truth even as the only knowledge of right and wrong that they have comes from their conscience.

In other words, I could take that pen called 'Disobedient' that Paul said God coralled us all into and re-label it 'Dysfunctional' and thus better convey the idea of what I belieive Paul meant.

There is a lot of other scripture to back this idea up. For instance, you can discover your thoughts on these things by simply listing all 32 of the verses where 'conscience' appears in the NT and reading them in thier context. The CLV is really good at fleshing out from the Greek these ideas I've presented.

Now, even though we all have a standard within us that we can use to guage truth, our conscience, it becomes an inadequate standard because there is nothing we can do to rid ourselves completely of the guilt and shame we constantly feel for the wrong things we have done. All we can know is either more or less guilt depending upon how much and what kind of bad things we've done. For there is a difference in degree between how we are made to feel for murder and lying and stealing and rape, etc. And the more you do these bad things to do and the more bad they are the more you lie to yourself and believe your lies such that eventually your conscience becomes cauterized to even what truth you have. And so there are 'good' and 'bad' humans, but, in a subjective way.

But, not in a really truthful way. Even as God is good.

The sacrifice by Jesus of Himself litrally 'for the sins of the world' is needed because the universe has Goodness and Right built into it. And I mean that quite literally even as some of the conclusions from quantum physics are making it known.

And so to violate this Goodness and Right is to invite Justice in to correct what is wrong. C.S. Lewis calls this 'the magic' and 'the deep magic' built into the universe that Aslan created. A true allegory of the truth that speaks to the hearts of so many humans because it is of truth. Even more than he himself might have known when he wrote it.

And so two things happen to us, according to The Words, when we hear the Gospel that Jesus has accomplished the forgivness of our sins, assuming we respond in faith to this meassge, which all good humans will do with 'good' being defined rather subjectively as how much a human follows the conscience or truth he/she has and for what has developed in their heart which is the way of thinking that is in them.

Those two things are a cleansed conscience which then becomes our responsibility to maintain and a 're-siring' of their spirit to create a new human with what John calls the sperm of Jehovah. A human that cannot continue to sin sin because this human is now, literally, a child of Jehovah just like any human conceived from a man's deposit of sperm makes that human his child with his characteristics.

I have concluded that this 'sperm is what the CLV calls holy spirt. And it is the spirit of Jesus which is the spirit of truth.

Thus are we really and truly and quite literally 'begotten anew' even as Jesus said we must be.

And where does a new baby begin to grow? Inside! Exactly where Jesus said the Kingdom of God is! (The Greek He used makes if clear that He meant the Kingdom of God is inside of us as opposed to outside of us not 'from within us' which idea the Greek has a word for that wasn't used. And so, once more, any cocnlusions drawn for thinking that that Jesus said the kingdom of God is 'within' us instead of 'inside' of us will be erroneous even as the transaltion is erroneous).

Now the end of all this is, Doc, that what the Beleiver has now is a cleansed conscience and the ability to be good and thus do right consistently. And so with all this right-doing were doing and by which we maintain a clean conscience besides the confessing of our shortcommings to each other when we realize that we did 'miss the mark' or 'fell short'  of 'the target', a new and more accurate and therefore narrower way of thinking develops in us even as this new human grows inside of us.

Which means a more accurate standard of truth develops in us. It is even the spirit of truth which is from Jesus.

And so we have an accurate gauge for truth developing inside of us even as we have holy spirit inside of us united with our spirit, actively working through our clean conscience and our heart, which is the sum total of our thoughts (very important point that!) and which works in tandem with our logic and reason and knowledge (very important that because none of us know everything and some things we know are inaccurate) to verify the accuracy or truth of a thought or conclusion someone else may present to us or that we may even think of ourselves!

Thus I am not elevating logic and knowledge and reason above the spirit of truth that I am becoming for *I* can still think wrong thoughts and draw wrong conclusions from those thoughts. What I am saying is that that the truth can be known in any situation where fasity exists by using logic correctly with reason and corrected knowledge which is prompted by correcting insight from the spirit inside me to confirm that what I am hearing is either of truth or of lies even as that standard by which I understand truth narrows, as it develops in me, to what you called, intrestingly enough, 'absolute' truth, even though all truth is, by nature absolute and immutable.

Paul repeatedly warned of those who would come with lies, in the name of Jesus, to deceive and lead away from the truth those that could be led away.

And that is even as I see it today. For the truth I know to be truth is not found in a way of thinking that broadens our thoughts to be able to accept whatever anyone says is truth simply because they can quote a verse and from their way of thinking, draw a conclusion, saying it came from revelation. But, because what I perceive came from that narrowing of my thoughts to understand what is the correct way of thinking even as Paul said that such a way exists.

"...God, Who wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth. For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and mankind, a Man, Christ Jesus, Who is giving Himself a correspondent Ransom for all (the testimony in its own eras)..."

And

"...Let no one be seducing (you to believe lies ed.) with empty words, for because of these things the indignation of God is coming on the sons of stubbornness. Do not, then, become joint partakers with them (of thier sins), for you were once darkness, yet now you are light in the Lord. As children of light be walking (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), testing what is well pleasing to the Lord.


There is more I can say about what you may mean about what you called the plurality of truth but my precious one needs my attention now and so for now, I say again as always,

Be good!

It's what you were created to be!

Dennis!

Hi! Dennis

WOW!
I found the germ (fundamental premise) of your comments here as both exciting and scripturally consistent.
Sadly, there are not that many occasions where once can read the confessions which you have stated here.
I found your Post a VERY enjoyable read.
Thanks for sharing!

[Doc]

Dennis;

With my last reply out of the way, would you be good enough to go back up and look at post #54 and reply to the questions I had for you there?

Hey Doc,

Yesterday I go quite busy and couldn't reply to your questions after I finished my post to Molly. And today my wife has the day off and so I'm spending the day with her.

I should have told you this in a short post yesterday so you wouldn't be left hanging. I'm very sorry I didn't. Will you forgive me?

I will give a reply, of course because your's are the kind of questions I've been wanting to be asked so I can learn from them.

Perhaps tomorrow I can get a reply out. I will certianly try.

In the meantime I do have some time this morning to answer this that you asked me to clarify.

Anytime we put any knowledge or reason above this, (The Spirit of Truth) we are guilty of missing the mark, which is exactly what happened to the Jews.

Even so, what I recognize is that this is your 'truth'. Not mine.

This appears to be saying that there is more than one truth. Did you want to phrase that differently?

  I gotta snicker at us a bit here because I'm slowly begining to perceive that we may actually be of a like mind on several points.

What I am saying here exactly is that this is an axiom that you hold as a 'truth' and that therefore drives your thinking, not mine.

For I am perceived by you as doing exactly as you say I am; putting knowledge and reason above 'the Spirit of Truth'. And that because I am using knowledge and reason and logic to prove my points even while saying that truth is narrow and singular in nature. And boldly so in a place where such a literal way of thinking is considered 'immature' at the least or at worse to be 'missing the mark' which is sinning even as Paul used the word hamartia, a word borrowed from archery to describe sin!

You did say Doc, facetiously or not, in answer to a direct question that you thought truth was plural in nature. Why would you say this if you didn't believe it? I would now say so you could be facetious. Unfortunately that time it was lost to me.

OK. Since then you've been heading away from that answer a bit as you try to communicate your mind.

OK. This is good.

You said this:

...I wasn't actually stating that truth (in the sense you actually meant) is plural. Using knowledge, reason and logic is fine; but these things are subject to the Spirit of truth that teaches us all truth, not the other way around. That's all I'm saying.The scripture advises; trust in the Lord with all your heart and not to lean on your own understanding. Our knowledge, reason and logic is limited. What I'm saying is that the Pharisees standard was too narrow, so they missed the larger truth, the big picture.

I found this quite encouraging and so I will attempt to share my heart, my way of thinking with you, so that you might know me better.

We have a conscience, which is defined as knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and evil (Just like that Tree in Gan Eden was called. I could even go so far as to say that it was 'The Tree of Conscience', An important point in my thinking which I introduce to you here).
And so we know, all of us with no exceptions, when we are doing right and when we are doing wrong. In other words, we know when we are lying or telling the truth; we know when we are engaing in illicit sex and when we aren't and we know that stealing is wrong, etc.
However, specifically, because we have all lied and gained by it, at the expense and to the hurt of others and because we have all been similar victims of such lies the singular nature of truth is lost in us because we all have to deal with the guilt and shame we properly feel- emotions produced in us because we have a conscience. However confession of the wrong is not what we do to alleviate the guilt and that is because of the shame we feel. Instead, what we do is justify ourselves to ourselves and so we lie some more, even to ourselves. And of course we must believe these lies. And that is why many of us become so angry about 'certian' things because when someone gets to close to the lies we 'know' as 'truth' we are at risk of having our shame exosed.

We are thus all dysfunctional. However, some of us are more dysfunctional than others not because they necessarily do more wrong but because of two other things. The first is because of the way many have come to think for the lies that they are both victims of and have perpertrated. These are thus more dysfunctional than those humans who heed their conscience and learn from it not to do those things they know are wrong. However even these have done wrong things even as through them they've allowed the consequences of these wrong things to teach them to do right. So, these do develop a way of thinking that is more in line with truth even as the only knowledge of right and wrong that they have comes from their conscience.

In other words, I could take that pen called 'Disobedient' that Paul said God coralled us all into and re-label it 'Dysfunctional' and thus better convey the idea of what I belieive Paul meant.

There is a lot of other scripture to back this idea up. For instance, you can discover your thoughts on these things by simply listing all 32 of the verses where 'conscience' appears in the NT and reading them in thier context. The CLV is really good at fleshing out from the Greek these ideas I've presented.

Now, even though we all have a standard within us that we can use to guage truth, our conscience, it becomes an inadequate standard because there is nothing we can do to rid ourselves completely of the guilt and shame we constantly feel for the wrong things we have done. All we can know is either more or less guilt depending upon how much and what kind of bad things we've done. For there is a difference in degree between how we are made to feel for murder and lying and stealing and rape, etc. And the more you do these bad things to do and the more bad they are the more you lie to yourself and believe your lies such that eventually your conscience becomes cauterized to even what truth you have. And so there are 'good' and 'bad' humans, but, in a subjective way.

But, not in a really truthful way. Even as God is good.

The sacrifice by Jesus of Himself litrally 'for the sins of the world' is needed because the universe has Goodness and Right built into it. And I mean that quite literally even as some of the conclusions from quantum physics are making it known.

And so to violate this Goodness and Right is to invite Justice in to correct what is wrong. C.S. Lewis calls this 'the magic' and 'the deep magic' built into the universe that Aslan created. A true allegory of the truth that speaks to the hearts of so many humans because it is of truth. Even more than he himself might have known when he wrote it.

And so two things happen to us, according to The Words, when we hear the Gospel that Jesus has accomplished the forgivness of our sins, assuming we respond in faith to this meassge, which all good humans will do with 'good' being defined rather subjectively as how much a human follows the conscience or truth he/she has and for what has developed in their heart which is the way of thinking that is in them.

Those two things are a cleansed conscience which then becomes our responsibility to maintain and a 're-siring' of their spirit to create a new human with what John calls the sperm of Jehovah. A human that cannot continue to sin sin because this human is now, literally, a child of Jehovah just like any human conceived from a man's deposit of sperm makes that human his child with his characteristics.

I have concluded that this 'sperm is what the CLV calls holy spirt. And it is the spirit of Jesus which is the spirit of truth.

Thus are we really and truly and quite literally 'begotten anew' even as Jesus said we must be.

And where does a new baby begin to grow? Inside! Exactly where Jesus said the Kingdom of God is! (The Greek He used makes if clear that He meant the Kingdom of God is inside of us as opposed to outside of us not 'from within us' which idea the Greek has a word for that wasn't used. And so, once more, any cocnlusions drawn for thinking that that Jesus said the kingdom of God is 'within' us instead of 'inside' of us will be erroneous even as the transaltion is erroneous).

Now the end of all this is, Doc, that what the Beleiver has now is a cleansed conscience and the ability to be good and thus do right consistently. And so with all this right-doing were doing and by which we maintain a clean conscience besides the confessing of our shortcommings to each other when we realize that we did 'miss the mark' or 'fell short'  of 'the target', a new and more accurate and therefore narrower way of thinking develops in us even as this new human grows inside of us.

Which means a more accurate standard of truth develops in us. It is even the spirit of truth which is from Jesus.

And so we have an accurate gauge for truth developing inside of us even as we have holy spirit inside of us united with our spirit, actively working through our clean conscience and our heart, which is the sum total of our thoughts (very important point that!) and which works in tandem with our logic and reason and knowledge (very important that because none of us know everything and some things we know are inaccurate) to verify the accuracy or truth of a thought or conclusion someone else may present to us or that we may even think of ourselves!

Thus I am not elevating logic and knowledge and reason above the spirit of truth that I am becoming for *I* can still think wrong thoughts and draw wrong conclusions from those thoughts. What I am saying is that that the truth can be known in any situation where fasity exists by using logic correctly with reason and corrected knowledge which is prompted by correcting insight from the spirit inside me to confirm that what I am hearing is either of truth or of lies even as that standard by which I understand truth narrows, as it develops in me, to what you called, intrestingly enough, 'absolute' truth, even though all truth is, by nature absolute and immutable.

Paul repeatedly warned of those who would come with lies, in the name of Jesus, to deceive and lead away from the truth those that could be led away.

And that is even as I see it today. For the truth I know to be truth is not found in a way of thinking that broadens our thoughts to be able to accept whatever anyone says is truth simply because they can quote a verse and from their way of thinking, draw a conclusion, saying it came from revelation. But, because what I perceive came from that narrowing of my thoughts to understand what is the correct way of thinking even as Paul said that such a way exists.

"...God, Who wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth. For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and mankind, a Man, Christ Jesus, Who is giving Himself a correspondent Ransom for all (the testimony in its own eras)..."

And

"...Let no one be seducing (you to believe lies ed.) with empty words, for because of these things the indignation of God is coming on the sons of stubbornness. Do not, then, become joint partakers with them (of thier sins), for you were once darkness, yet now you are light in the Lord. As children of light be walking (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), testing what is well pleasing to the Lord.


There is more I can say about what you may mean about what you called the plurality of truth but my precious one needs my attention now and so for now, I say again as always,

Be good!

It's what you were created to be!

Dennis!

I understand much better what you're saying now, and I found a lot to agree with in this post.

When I am speaking of the "plurality" of truth (and not being facetious) what I am really referring to is "levels" or "layers" of truth. I would agree with your statement that all truth is absolute, but what I'm getting at is that there are, within the framework of (absolute) truth, layers of understanding. The higher layers of understanding come with  a view that is perhaps narrower in some respects, but that must be wider in other respects, or these higher layers may be missed entirely. These higher layers are what I refer to as "spiritual truths". Can you gain access to these layers through literal levels of interpretation? Yes, to a degree, but they are more often than not a stepping-stone to the higher layers, which often a narrowly literal approach can prevent one from seeing at all. The physical points to the spiritual, because the physical is the shadow of the spiritual. Is there reality and truth in the physical? Yes, but the higher reality and truth is the spiritual. The things that are seen (physical) are made from the things that are unseen (spiritual). The spiritual is the primary reality. This is why I say that our reason and logic must be informed by the Spirit, not the Spirit informed by reason and logic. Our default tendency as westerners, is to put reason and logic above the Spirit. But the spirit is the higher reality. Make sense?

[Eleutheros]

Good Morning!

Gilbert! Thank you for your gracious words concerning my post. They are, really, much appreciated. 

Tim! Welcome back!

Hey man, it's been a long time waiting, but I finally got around to replying to this message. To answer your question: I'm not married. Just about to turn 21, but I haven't found "the one" yet. lol

May you soon find each other!

I tend to study alone (in person, I mean.) I study with lots of people on here, as in, share my thoughts and stuff.  Not that I don't want to study with others (outside of the internet), but most people I know either don't agree with UR or don't study much themselves.

'Tis sad, isn't it?

I can talk to my parents (my mom believes in UR and my dad more or less does), but they don't study a whole lot like I do. And even though my sister believes in UR she doesn't study the Bible or UR very much. So, basically, I'm out of luck, aside from my internet friends (currently speaking).

Well, all I can say is, been there done that and still doing it!

Tim, feel free to chime in with your points even as Molly does. Tete-a-tete's may occur, but that's OK. Paul argued a lot for the truth using the same scriptures from which others derived the plentitude of false conclusions that permeated the thoughts of many in his time, even as it is today.

All you need is a willingness to discover truth and a willingness to change your way of thinking when you perceive correct knowledge even as Apollos had to have the way of God expounded to him more accurately and even as is said in the proverbs:

"The ear that listens to the reproof that gives life will remain among the wise."

And

"Whoever loves instruction and correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is like a brute beast, stupid and indiscriminating."

For it is a truth that The Words divide men into one of two types: the wise or the foolish. And that this division is based on the way of thinking that is in them, even as Jesus put it so well (as He usually does!):

"The good man out of the good treasure of his heart is bringing forth that which is good, and the wicked man out of the wicked treasure of his heart is bringing forth that which is wicked, for out of the superabundance of the heart his mouth is speaking.

Which prompts me to ask: "What is 'the heart' if it is not the sum total of the thoughts in us that lead us to what we speak and how we respond?

Change the thoughts and you change the heart?

What do you think?

Be good, Tim!

Hey Doc!

Thank you, my friend, for hanging in there with me! You've given me a lot to think about and type about Which I will do because I very much want to.

However, for the next 4 days, I find, I'm going to be quite busy. Which will give me time to think, but not type.

But, know that I will reply to every question you asked of me.

And know that I truly appreciate you asking them!

There are two questions I asked prior that I would like you to look into while I'm out and about.

I've asked several times about spirit, even qualifying my question, as you asked, when I said this:

"If I ask "What is flesh?" The answer is, "It is our appetites and desires and the drives to fulfill these that originate in the needs of the body."

And so I ask similarly "What is spirit?"

I am asking this, in earnest, because there is an answer. And it is an answer that, I've found, clears up a lot of issues concerning what many call 'spiritually discerened' things. Even as anyone who claims to speak from 'the spiritual' and cannot answer that question should be ignored, even as you will know this is a truth when you know what spirit is.

Unfortunately, if you don't arrive at the answer on your own then you will not perceive the answer I would give as being truthful and so I cannot give it here.

The second is to answer the question:

"What is it exactly that The Words say Jehovah foreknows/foreknew where these words appear? Hint: They do not say He foreknew/foreknows the future.

Be good!

Dennis!

[Doc]

Thank you, my friend, for hanging in there with me! You've given me a lot to think about and type about Which I will do because I very much want to.

However, for the next 4 days, I find, I'm going to be quite busy. Which will give me time to think, but not type.

But, know that I will reply to every question you asked of me.

And know that I truly appreciate you asking them!

There are two questions I asked prior that I would like you to look into while I'm out and about.

I've asked several times about spirit, even qualifying my question, as you asked, when I said this:

"If I ask "What is flesh?" The answer is, "It is our appetites and desires and the drives to fulfill these that originate in the needs of the body."

And so I ask similarly "What is spirit?"

I am asking this, in earnest, because there is an answer. And it is an answer that, I've found, clears up a lot of issues concerning what many call 'spiritually discerened' things. Even as anyone who claims to speak from 'the spiritual' and cannot answer that question should be ignored, even as you will know this is a truth when you know what spirit is.

Unfortunately, if you don't arrive at the answer on your own then you will not perceive the answer I would give as being truthful and so I cannot give it here.

The second is to answer the question:

"What is it exactly that The Words say Jehovah foreknows/foreknew where these words appear? Hint: They do not say He foreknew/foreknows the future.

Be good!

Dennis!

In answer to your second question: In the new testament there are at least three places that speak of God's foreknowlege (proginosko) They are Acts 26:5, 1 Peter 1:20 and Romans 11:2 It is reasonable to infer from this and other information we have about God that he has foreknown all things, not just the specific ones mentioned. There are a number of qualities to God that are not directly stated, but inferred from the overall witness of scripture.

I think I already gave an answer for what is spirit in a previous post, but perhaps it's not what you were looking for. So I'll do a bit of digging and see what I can come up with for you.

The word spirit in both Hebrew and Greek means (essentially) Wind, Breath, Life. God is Spirit, and the Father of spirits, and God is also Love and Light. One might say that spirit is the pure essence of things; the highest reality. Our inner, spiritual man is the highest reality, the core, the truth of who we are.
 
Is this what you're looking for?

[Eleutheros]

Hey Doc!

I'm finally back to keep my promise to you and answer all these questions you asked. And know that I do appreciate you asking them because a few gave me cause to re-think on some things.

You see, Creation Hymn is a work in progress, even though I call it 'finalized' as of my posting it here.

Many changes were incorporated into it from my first 'final' draft which was written before I had dealt with the issue of hell – an issue that I had avoided looking into for a long time because I sure didn't want to find that, of a truth, that peculiar hell King James gave into our thoughts was real!

But, once I came to realize that, of a fact, Jesus is the Savior of all men especially of those who believe, my 'fear' of hell vanished, easily enough, because of exactly what I had already come to believe from my studies of Genesis.

In other words, I experienced no serious agonizing over the issue of hell because what I already learned of truth from Genesis, as well as from my own experiences with my God, had prepared me to accept, with ease, the truth that we currently name Ultimate Reconciliation.

Discovering UR was actually an "Ah, Ha!" moment for me, once I grasped it's truth, because, of a sudden, I found that a lot of the questions about hell, to which I had no answers, were simply nullified through irrelevance, even though they were legitimate questions while I continued to believe that peculiar hell existed.

OK. So much for my preamble ramble. Let's get to it, shall we?

(In my answers I am assuming, Doc, that you read all the way through Creation Hymn and so you are at least familiar with what I wrote even if you may not agree with it.)

Regarding more specifically some of our earlier conversation, I'd appreciate some explanation from you on the literal interpretation of this selection from Genesis: (CLV)

Gen 3:13 And saying is Yahweh Elohim to the woman, "What is this you do? "And saying is the woman, "The serpent lured me and I am eating.

Who or what is the serpent? Are we to believe that this was an actual, literal serpent? If so, why?

Ahhhh…. The serpent; he/it's been a problem from the first! 

Well, according to Genesis, there are a lot of fantastic (to us) things about this creature/being called the serpent. First off, he/it talks! And with intelligence! And The Adam was apparently not surprised by this, but, actually conversed with it as if this were nothing new.

Fantastic!

OK. So here then, Doc, is that 'foundational' thought, the axiom, if you will, from which I build:
The reality that The Adam knew in Gan Eden is not only lost on us, but, is beyond our comprehension, except for what we have in The Words and what we carried out with us after being driven out.
(I say 'we' here, inclusively, because 'we' were in the loins of The Adam in much the same way that the scriptures say that Levi was in the loins of Abraham and so both are considered to have paid the tithe to Melchizidek.)

Did you get that? We cannot know, from our experience, what that world was like because that world, including the innocence that existed without a conscience, is lost to us, including all the fantastic things the Genesis account gives us, which things we would not even know about but for these ancient words.

And they certainly do tell us a fantastic story!

And so, I would ask, just because something appears fantastic to us, even straining credulity, given only what we know from our experiences, does that make the fantastic any less unreal than that reality we know only from our experiences?

Or, is it mostly our inability to believe that keeps the fantastic unreal to us in our thoughts? Even to saying that it is also from ulterior motives that we often do not want to believe the fantastic because to do so would interfere with what we do want to believe, and so we say it is to fantastic?

For example: Are there not humans living today who deny the moon landings and that the holocaust ever occurred just because it just seems to fantastic to them? Even the 9/11 'George W. Bush did it' conspirators have their part in this kind of thinking, finding it much easier to believe, because they want to, that the US Government was behind 9/11 rather than the 'to fantastic' truth that it was those trained in radical Muslim thought that were soley reponsible for carrying out the attacks that killed over three thousand of us in one day.

Is not the technology we have today fantastic? Even in the sense of what the science fiction writers of the past conceived of as fantastic to them, in their time?

Have you never heard stories from a missionary about the fantastic things happening through the power of God such that the dead are raised, the blind see, the lame walk, the sick are made whole, demons are cast out, poison was ingested with no harm done and angels were seen?

All of these things are to fantastic to many, but are, nonetheless, very real.

And so, yes, I do believe that the serpent was both actual and literal.

However, Doc, it is still a choice one has to make to believe that the Genesis narrative is meant to be a literal account of real time events involving real-time humans and so what you choose to believe about the fantastic things in Genesis is between you and your God.

But, I will remind you that the truth is even as you demonstrated it to be in your own answers; that choosing to believe Genesis is to be taken figuratively discounts your ability to perceive it for what it is, a literal, very real history of where we came from and how we got to be where we are.

And besides this, I would also like to ask you where the line of demarcation is to be drawn between the figurative and the literal?

When Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel? Was Abel's murder an allegorical event or a real-time one?
When Tubal and Jubal were born? How about after the flood? Or was that only an allegorical account as well?

So, I have given you why I believe what I believe and would also add this thought:
Genesis is the book that, literally, lays the foundation for every single truth we know from The Words. It is the only thing we have that can accurately tell us where we came from and how we got to be where we are today. Without it we would be totally ignorant of where we came from and thus be proven stupid, as well, for the things we would imagine to fill in this gap in our knowledge, even as we have demonstrated ourselves to be stupid for the things we have already imagined- from the pantheon of ancient gods all the way to modern evolution, we are stupid about our origins- except for Genesis telling us where we came from and how we got here.

And so, for many, the historical narrative we call Genesis seems to fantastic to believe, as history, because these would rather believe the really fantastic things, in the truest sense of that word, that come from our own vain imaginings.

For if Genesis cannot be trusted to be an accurate and literal historical account of where we came from and how we got here, no matter how fantastic some elements of it's narrative may seem to us, almost 6000 years, lots and lots of sins and one worldwide flood removed from that beginning, then I put it to you that the rest of The Words are indeed, also to fantastic to be believed.

As for whom the serpent is: He/it is The Satan embodied either by possession or by invention, even as The Words declare him/it to be.

Rom 16:20 Now the God of peace will be crushing Satan under your feet swiftly. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you!

(What is Paul referencing here if it isn't the prophesy found in Gen 3:14-15? If it is this prophesy he is referencing then Paul certainly believed that Satan was at least equivalent enough to 'the serpent' to utilize this prophesy to describe what Jesus would do to Satan for the believers. Of course that's just what Paul believed. *smile*)

(By the way, didn't you just love that part in The Passion Of The Christ when Jesus literally fulfilled that prophesy and STOMPED on the serpent's head as it was tempting Him? Boy Howdy! Did I ever cheer! And I mean out LOUD!)

2 Cor 11:3 Yet I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deludes Eve by its craftiness, your apprehensions should be corrupted from the singleness and pureness which is in Christ.

(Paul sure thought of the serpent as real, even as he did Eve and her beguiling, don't you think?)

Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent called Adversary and Satan, who is deceiving the whole inhabited earth. It was cast into the earth, and its messengers were cast with it.

Rev 20:1-2 And I perceived a messenger descending out of heaven, having the key of the submerged chaos and a large chain in his hand. And he lays hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the Adversary and Satan, and binds him a thousand years.

Gen 3:14 And saying is Yahweh Elohim to the serpent, "As you do this, most cursed are you of every beast, and of all field life. On your torso shall you go, and soil shall you eat all the days of your life.

So, the serpent originally had legs and feet and/or wings.

Apparently so…

After this point, the serpent was made to crawl on its belly instead. Does this lend itself more to a literal interpretation, or an allegorical one?

A literal one.

You don't have any problem believing, do you, Doc, that a real donkey spoke words to Balaam? Or that a fig tree withered overnight when Jesus cursed it? Or that He walked on water? Or that Jesus could read minds? Or that Phillip 'quantum leaped' after baptizing the Ethiopian? Or that the widow's small cruse of oil filled the many pots it was poured into? Or that an axe head floated? Or that Jesus was born of a virgin? Or that Jesus fed, variously, four thousand and five thousand men as well as women and children on a few very meager provisions? Or that the sun stood still, that is to say that the earth quit rotating, and then started up again, so Joshua could have enough time to win an important battle? Or that it rained forty days and nights such that all that water, combining with all the water that came up from inside the earth, covered the entire planet with water? Or that the Red Sea was divided by a strong wind and withdrew back on itself so the Israelites could walk over the dry sea bed to the other side? Or that there was a literal pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud during the day that guided the Israelites? Or that manna was literally bread from heaven? Or that the Hebrews clothes and sandals didn't wear out during the 40 year wandering? Or that Jehovah spoke to Moses from a bush that burned but wasn't consumed? Or that a very large gourd sprung up overnight to shade Jonah? Or that Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days and nights, even as Jesus referenced this to be a literal sign of what he was really going to do, that is, rise from the dead after three days and three nights (as the Jews counted within the Passover Week), a thing pretty fantastic in of itself, don't you think?

Or do you hold that these things are allegorical as well, simply because they are fantastic?

Gen 3:15 And enmity am I setting between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall hurt your head and you shall hurt his heel.

In what sense can 3:15 be taken literally?

Ahhhh! Good one! I will answer with a riddle: "What's a metaphor?" To put cows in! 

And so "What's an allegory?" isn't even a joke.

Don't confuse meataphor and allegory.

They are as different as a meadow is from a metaphor!

This quote is a prophesy that those 'in the know' call The Protevangelium, a $100.00 word that means 'the first evangel'. It is a prophesy of what God was going to do about what had just happened!
And no prophesy is ever allegorical! (Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?)
 
It is, therefore, told in a metaphorical way because the actuality of it would not be realized for some 4,000 years. (Notice that there is no mention of the cross and no mention of Bethlehem or of the murder of the innocents in this prophesy) Yet, there is the curious phrase "...emnity between your seed…" meaning the 'descendants' of Satan, "…and her seed" meaning those descended from her progeny. However, the woman does not produce seed, or sperm, but the male does. (And so descendants are counted from the male because of the nature of sex being that the man takes the woman to be his bride.) This, then, is implying that, somehow, the woman would conceive and have descendants without a deposit of sperm, at least without one from a human male.

Of course the scriptures abound with references derived from this 'first evangel':

For instance: Jesus' referring to the Pharisees as having the Devil for their father because they imitate his lying, false ways. And the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14 "…the virgin shall conceive…" implying that at the time of the Septuagint the Jews understood that the Messiah would be born of a virgin (even if they now deny this, saying, instead, that the word they formerly agreed should be translated 'virgin' in Isaiah is really 'unclear' because it could mean a married woman as well).

Of course, a crawling serpent would wound a heel, even as that heel, so wounded, could be then used to crush the head of the serpent that bit it. An exquisitely good metaphor for what would happen cosmically as Jesus took the sins of the Kosmos on Himself and was thus wounded with death in our place. And thus, the power of Satan, which is through sin, was destroyed even as Jesus entered the realm of the dead and snatched it's keys from Satan and after awakening them, preached the Gospel that he had accomplished the forgiveness of sins to the dead! WOW! And of course, many of them believed, even as they would have in life and were resurrected and went into the city of Jerusalem and showed themselves to many.

Fantastic!

Thus was the head of Satan crushed, even his power, which was in death because of sin.

So, yes, what I just said from history and from prophesy was very nicely summed up in this little phrase of Words about what Jehovah intended to do about the way things turned out in the garden, against what He intended to have happen- specifically, that The Adam would gain virtue, through trust in Elohim, before they got their conscience from the fruit of 'The Tree of Conscience' and thus make their conscience the powerful thing it was intended to be in and for all of us, the descendants of The Adam.

Pretty fantastic, eh?

Gen 3:16 And to the woman He says, "Multiplying, yea, multiplying am I your grief and the groaning of your pregnancy. In grief shall you bear sons. "Yet by your husband is your restoration, and he shall rule over you.

What is the literal sense of the above verse (aside from the multiplication of grief and groaning of pregnancy)?

I believe that I explained that one in a foot note from Creation Hymn on the Hebrew phrase 'ezer kenegdo'.

I will, however, answer this question with a question: What did Paul really mean when He said this to Timothy:

"… (for Adam was first molded, thereafter Eve, and Adam was not seduced, yet the woman, being deluded, has come to be in the transgression). Yet she shall be saved through the child bearing, if ever they should be remaining in faith and love and holiness with sanity."
 
sozo de dia ho teknogonia is a curious phrase, or so I'm told, in the original Greek because of where the word dia, here translated as 'in' appears- rather than the Greek word en which truly means, in Greek, what we mean when we say "in".

Dia has a deeper meaning than en, such that if Paul had intended this passage only to reference Jesus' virgin birth, in an allegorical way, en would have sufficed.

But he choose dia… so what was Paul really trying to say here? For there is another legitimate way of understanding this verse, in Greek, that is quite literal even as it is fantastic! With proof for it's literal, but fantastic accuracy even in our modern times!

Gen 3:22 And saying is Yahweh Elohim, "Behold! The human becomes as one of us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he stretch forth his hand, moreover, and take of the tree of the living, and eat and live for the eon--!

The above was the verse that I was referring to when I was talking about the tree of life, but it says live for the eon, not forever. Obviously, God did not want them living for the eon in their new state of being as "one of us, knowing good and evil". I don't have a specific question for you on this one, but I'd be interested in your take on its meaning.

The Tree of LIFE! What a glorious thing it is!
It's mere presence in the Garden raises the most difficult questions of all to answer when one approaches Genesis believing that Elohim knew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them.

And I asked these very questions in my first post to Tim. I asked, leadingly:

Why two trees??

And why create the Tree of Life at all if Elohim already knew, before He created them, that He was going to have to banish them from eating it?

Why doesn't His foreknowledge of their turning make The Tree of Life a superfluous creation, at best and a deception at worst?

And why does The Tree of life return in The New Heaven and The New Earth (The New Universe) where all things are reconciled and restored to Jehovah?

I can answer these questions very simply from knowing that Elohim did not know, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them.

Here, then, are my answers to my own questions

Why two trees??

Because the set-up in the Garden- and make no mistake, they were set-up-was intended to be a 'set up' to succeed not to fail.

The Tree of Life, from which they obviously were allowed to eat, was there because Elohim intended for them to 'pass the test'. And when they did, everything would already be there for them- including a tree whose 12 fruits and leaves were intended to be especially restorative to the physical needs of corporeal beings so that they could live age-enduring life- lives described in Isaiah as being as long as that of a tree.

Only the fatalistic mind of a Manichaean monk-turned-Christian could conceive the foreign idea that God intended the set-up to be nothing more than a glorified sting-operation diabolically designed to see them fall, because, apparently, He foreknew they would, anyway.

So, which came first the chicken or the egg? Did his foreknowledge that they would, in fact, 'fall' before He created them mean that they had no choice but to 'fall'?

Answer: "Yes."

Or was this set up intended to ensure that they would fall exactly as His foreknowledge said they would?

Answer: "Yes."

*sigh* It's a horrifying and hideous thing to fall into the hands of St Augustine's god.

Good thing he was wrong about Him.

And why create the Tree of Life at all if Elohim already knew, before He created them, that He was going to have to banish them from eating it?

Even a child can understand enough of the implications of believing that Elohim knew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to fall before He created them to ask this insightful question; a question to which no Calvinist has a ready, non-evasive answer.
 
And a question that has no meaning if, in fact, Elohim didn't know, as a fact, that The Adam were going to turn before He created them.

For there is another 'childish' question that every child can know to ask, readily enough, when they are taught Protestant theology and that is: "What about those who died before Jesus came and never heard the Gospel? Are they in hell, burning forever?

And so, what do those who hold dearly to Augustine's and Calvin's 'truth' say in reply?

You tell me.

I'll bet, though that it's even the same thing they say when you ask logical questions of them concerning the logic they use to arrive at the conclusion that Elohim knew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to fall before He created them.

Why doesn't His foreknowledge of their turning make The Tree of Life a superfluous creation, at best and a deception at worst?

Answer: It doesn't. If He foreknew they were going to turn, as a fact, before He created them then the Tree of Life is, at best, a superfluous creation and at worst part of a grand deception perpetrated by Elohim Himself, even as His foreknowledge makes Him the Architect and Administrator of every evil and every sin ever perpetrated by a human.

And so this question, too, has no meaning if Elohim did not know, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them.

And why does The Tree of life return in The New Heaven and The New Earth (The New Universe) where all things are reconciled and restored to Jehovah?

Because the human beings living then will be just as corporeal as they are now and will need this special tree's 12 fruits and leaves to keep themselves healthy and to heal them when they become damaged from all the adventures they are going to have as they live out their eonian lives, lives as long as that of a tree, building, creating art, exploring, singing, dancing, writing stories and poetry, planting, harvesting, cooking, eating, talking, marrying, making love and raising children… in other words all the good things we humans are really good at doing while we praise and honor our God in everything we do.

It is, in Greek, an interesting phrase used in Revelation about the Trees of life (at least three of them)…

It is: "...phullon ho xulon eis therapeia ho ethnos."

Therapeia means 'therapy'; a different kind of healing than iaomai. And of course you recognize ethnos as being where we get the English word 'ethnic' from.

In other words, the tree's leaves are for the therapeutic healing of the ethnics.

And so, I, who am among the first to believe, while this age lasts, look forward to the redemption of my spirit and soul from this body to be resurrected into a new age-enduring body dwelling in The New Heaven's and it's New Earth- a literal re-creation that is on its way, even as this Heavens and it's Earth are passing by- where righteousness dwells in all, through virtue, even as the new human I am re-sired to be is being trained in righteousness, in this age, so that *I* will be living my age-enduring life as a good human in the eon to come where God, Himself is All and in All and the former things are never remembered.

I absolutely love being human!

And good, even as Jehovah, my Father, is good and exactly as I was created to be!

Be good, then, Doc, even as you, too, were created to be!

Dennis!

[Eleutheros]

Doc wrote:

Gen 3:22 And saying is Yahweh Elohim, "Behold! The human becomes as one of us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he stretch forth his hand, moreover, and take of the tree of the living, and eat and live for the eon--!

The above was the verse that I was referring to when I was talking about the tree of life, but it says live for the eon, not forever. Obviously, God did not want them living for the eon in their new state of being as "one of us, knowing good and evil". I don't have a specific question for you on this one, but I'd be interested in your take on its meaning.

To All:

Doc asked me to comment on this verse and after my prevous post I thought it might be a good idea to clarify my comments a bit by sharing some of my thoughts.

For it is from this quote that I get the idea that the set-up in the Garden was a set-up to succeed, not to fail. And so let's see if I can convey my thoughts on this to those of you still interested:

In this quote, Elohim says that each One of Them among His plurality knows the difference between good and evil. And now, because of eating the fruit of The Tree of Conscience, The Adam knows the difference as well.

Even as we all, the decendants of The Adam, do.

And so my first conclusion is that The Adam did not originally have a conscience, simply because a consceince is what the fruit imparted to them; for 'the knowledge of the difference between good and evil' is the very definition of a conscience.

Now, in every other way, God split the plural essence of Himself between The Adam, including, originally building the Female into Ish, planning later to remove her from him, even as his awakening to his need for a female was well thought out by Elohim.

Even as everything else He did was well thought out.

The second conclusion I derived, then, comes from these two facts: The first is that Elohim knows the difference between good and evil and the second is that the The Adam was designed to resemble Elohim. Therefore it was correct to conclude that Elohim must also have wanted The Adam to be like Him in knowing the difference between Good and Evil and choosing to do good always.

In other words, He must have originally wanted them to be virtuous even as He, Himself is virtuous.

Thus, my original and seemingly logical question then became: "Why didn't He just give them a conscience from the start, after all he is God and He can do anything!"

This question took a long time for me to answer. Until I realized that the correct question to ask wasn't, 'why didn't He do something' but, instead should be, 'why did He do what He did?'

And so the question became one that I imagine Elohim, Who always does what is right, must have asked among Himself: "How can I create a corporeal being who knows the difference between good and evil, even as We do and will delight in choosing to do what is good and right to do always even as We do?

Well, of course, the answer was for Him to do exactly what He did. Give them a genuine and legitimate choice, with corresponding consequences, so that they could, one way or another, 'easy' or 'hard', aquire virtue through trust in Him.

And then, once virtue was established, by refusing a temptaion (enter The Satan), give them permission to eat the very fruit they had to be initially forbidden to eat exactly so that they could have the choice necessary to establish virtue!

For what is virtue? It is nothing, is it not, if it cannot also freely choose against being virtuous?

It is a fact that we have knowledge of what virtue is even as we have a word for it, 'virtue'. And that this concept developed naturally in us because we have a conscience- despite the problem that we all have of not obeying it's direction as it conveys to us the difference between what is right and wrong to do, or, if you will the difference between good and evil; for evil comes into us and is with us when we choose to do what we know is wrong.

So, Elohim initially provided everything that would be needed for them to live age-enduring life from the start, which provision is found in the Tree of The Living, because His intention was for them to succeed not to fail and thus live, from that point on, age-enduring lives in righteousness, enabled to reproduce and pass this desire to be virtuous onto the rest of the human race- even as we are now re-sired by Him to want to be righteous, through the spirit of Jesus inside of us, where the Kngdom is, acting like sperm when it penetratrs an ovum and creates a new human being with all the characteristics of the Father.

This then is the motive of a loving and truthful God Who is a Father. And one worthy of Him, considering the great risk He took, even knowing what would be required from Him, should they fail- The sacrifice of His very Self through the obedience of His only sexually conceived and therefore, human Son whose Spirit came from Heaven to do His Father's will.

~

Many think that, somehow, Jehovah would not be God if He did not know, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them. Even to the point of vehemence when this notion is challenged. I understand this, even as I understand how deep seated this need is in us to imagine that He must have known because He would seem diminished, somehow, in our eyes if He didn't.

However, many appear to have no problem with the logical consequences of just such a thought. Or do they?

Let me illustrate:

One day you wake up and get ready to go to work. Your spouse greets you at the door and after kissing you goodbye and saying, "I love you", your spouse hands you your car keys saying, "Drive carefully!"

The next thing you know your waking up in a hospital, seriously injured from a hideous automobile collision. You remember what happened and how it happened and you wonder that you are even alive.

But, now you see that your spouse is there, by your side, smiling and you can see the love in your spouse's face as he/she says seriously enough, "You know, dear, I foreknew, as a fact, that you were going to be in this wreck. And so here I am now, to help see you through it. Trust me that this is all as it's supposed to be and that I love you."

You are shocked beyond words to hear your spouse say this and yet as you probe him/her with questions, at first unbelievingly, your spouse finally convinces you that he/she did indeed know in advance and therefore as a fact, even as he/she handed you the car keys at the door on that fated morning, that you were going to be in this horrific collision, even as he/she also foreknew that you would be here asking him/her these questions with a broken and damaged body in this hospital.

And so, dumfounded and feeling sick at heart from perceiving this truth about your spouse, you ask the most logical question there is to ask: "Why didn't you stop me from going out that door!?!  You even handed me the car keys... and told me to be careful!"

To which your spouse replies, with all seriousness, "My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts. All I'm asking you to do is to trust me and know that I love you."

*sigh* This 'spouse' is the god of St. Augustine and John Calvin.

And according to them, He wants us to live forever with Him in eternity, because He loves us, well at least as many as he foreknew would be saved from hell, through Jesus, even the hell that He created, so that these lucky, 'chosen ones' would then become His Son's *gulp* bride..."

So, is St. Augustine's God your God?

Including what they taught us to think about Elohim; that He foreknew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them?

You here on Tentmaker, based on logic and reason and a very literal reading of The Words, as well as from what you have come to know from your experiences with your God, have come to reject that peculiar hell they translated into existence.

So, you know of how ulterior thier motives were when they gave us King Jame's Bible

Consider then that if John Calvin's systematic theology was wrong concerning everything else you've come to know, personally, about your God, why should this peculair 'foreknowedge' they gave to Him be any different?

After all, according to them, God needs to know who is going to hell and who isn't, from before the foundation of the world, or else the existence of hell makes him quite the capricious monster for His choosing who would be saved from hell and who wouldn't.

Come to think of it, is there anyway for Him to avoid being perceived as a capricious monster for this peculiar foreknowledge He supossedly acted on in creating us?

Nothing I can think of- except His forgivness and love, experienced

However, if that peculiar hell of their's is not real, then is it still necessary for Him, in our thoughts, to know something He couldn't know, as a fact, beforehand- that is what the 'either-or' choice would be of a created being that He was wanting to instill virtue in?

And so now you know why I always close by saying:

Be good!

It's what you were created to be!

[Doc]

Thanks for your answers. I have given some thoughts about them below.

Hey Doc!

Regarding more specifically some of our earlier conversation, I'd appreciate some explanation from you on the literal interpretation of this selection from Genesis: (CLV)

Gen 3:13 And saying is Yahweh Elohim to the woman, "What is this you do? "And saying is the woman, "The serpent lured me and I am eating.

Who or what is the serpent? Are we to believe that this was an actual, literal serpent? If so, why?

Ahhhh…. The serpent; he/it's been a problem from the first! 

Well, according to Genesis, there are a lot of fantastic (to us) things about this creature/being called the serpent. First off, he/it talks! And with intelligence! And The Adam was apparently not surprised by this, but, actually conversed with it as if this were nothing new.

Fantastic!

OK. So here then, Doc, is that 'foundational' thought, the axiom, if you will, from which I build:
The reality that The Adam knew in Gan Eden is not only lost on us, but, is beyond our comprehension, except for what we have in The Words and what we carried out with us after being driven out.
(I say 'we' here, inclusively, because 'we' were in the loins of The Adam in much the same way that the scriptures say that Levi was in the loins of Abraham and so both are considered to have paid the tithe to Melchizidek.)

Did you get that? We cannot know, from our experience, what that world was like because that world, including the innocence that existed without a conscience, is lost to us, including all the fantastic things the Genesis account gives us, which things we would not even know about but for these ancient words.

And they certainly do tell us a fantastic story!

And so, I would ask, just because something appears fantastic to us, even straining credulity, given only what we know from our experiences, does that make the fantastic any less unreal than that reality we know only from our experiences?

Or, is it mostly our inability to believe that keeps the fantastic unreal to us in our thoughts? Even to saying that it is also from ulterior motives that we often do not want to believe the fantastic because to do so would interfere with what we do want to believe, and so we say it is to fantastic?

For example: Are there not humans living today who deny the moon landings and that the holocaust ever occurred just because it just seems to fantastic to them? Even the 9/11 'George W. Bush did it' conspirators have their part in this kind of thinking, finding it much easier to believe, because they want to, that the US Government was behind 9/11 rather than the 'to fantastic' truth that it was those trained in radical Muslim thought that were soley reponsible for carrying out the attacks that killed over three thousand of us in one day.

Is not the technology we have today fantastic? Even in the sense of what the science fiction writers of the past conceived of as fantastic to them, in their time?

Have you never heard stories from a missionary about the fantastic things happening through the power of God such that the dead are raised, the blind see, the lame walk, the sick are made whole, demons are cast out, poison was ingested with no harm done and angels were seen?

All of these things are to fantastic to many, but are, nonetheless, very real.

And so, yes, I do believe that the serpent was both actual and literal.

However, Doc, it is still a choice one has to make to believe that the Genesis narrative is meant to be a literal account of real time events involving real-time humans and so what you choose to believe about the fantastic things in Genesis is between you and your God.

But, I will remind you that the truth is even as you demonstrated it to be in your own answers; that choosing to believe Genesis is to be taken figuratively discounts your ability to perceive it for what it is, a literal, very real history of where we came from and how we got to be where we are.

And besides this, I would also like to ask you where the line of demarcation is to be drawn between the figurative and the literal?

When Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel? Was Abel's murder an allegorical event or a real-time one?
When Tubal and Jubal were born? How about after the flood? Or was that only an allegorical account as well?

So, I have given you why I believe what I believe and would also add this thought:
Genesis is the book that, literally, lays the foundation for every single truth we know from The Words. It is the only thing we have that can accurately tell us where we came from and how we got to be where we are today. Without it we would be totally ignorant of where we came from and thus be proven stupid, as well, for the things we would imagine to fill in this gap in our knowledge, even as we have demonstrated ourselves to be stupid for the things we have already imagined- from the pantheon of ancient gods all the way to modern evolution, we are stupid about our origins- except for Genesis telling us where we came from and how we got here.

And so, for many, the historical narrative we call Genesis seems to fantastic to believe, as history, because these would rather believe the really fantastic things, in the truest sense of that word, that come from our own vain imaginings.

For if Genesis cannot be trusted to be an accurate and literal historical account of where we came from and how we got here, no matter how fantastic some elements of it's narrative may seem to us, almost 6000 years, lots and lots of sins and one worldwide flood removed from that beginning, then I put it to you that the rest of The Words are indeed, also to fantastic to be believed.

As for whom the serpent is: He/it is The Satan embodied either by possession or by invention, even as The Words declare him/it to be.

Rom 16:20 Now the God of peace will be crushing Satan under your feet swiftly. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you!

(What is Paul referencing here if it isn't the prophesy found in Gen 3:14-15? If it is this prophesy he is referencing then Paul certainly believed that Satan was at least equivalent enough to 'the serpent' to utilize this prophesy to describe what Jesus would do to Satan for the believers. Of course that's just what Paul believed. *smile*)

(By the way, didn't you just love that part in The Passion Of The Christ when Jesus literally fulfilled that prophesy and STOMPED on the serpent's head as it was tempting Him? Boy Howdy! Did I ever cheer! And I mean out LOUD!)

2 Cor 11:3 Yet I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deludes Eve by its craftiness, your apprehensions should be corrupted from the singleness and pureness which is in Christ.

(Paul sure thought of the serpent as real, even as he did Eve and her beguiling, don't you think?)

Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent called Adversary and Satan, who is deceiving the whole inhabited earth. It was cast into the earth, and its messengers were cast with it.

Rev 20:1-2 And I perceived a messenger descending out of heaven, having the key of the submerged chaos and a large chain in his hand. And he lays hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the Adversary and Satan, and binds him a thousand years.

Here is why I asked you this question. Below is the Hebrew word that we translate 'serpent'


נחשׁ
nâchash
naw-khash'
A primitive root; properly to hiss, that is, whisper a (magic) spell; generally to prognosticate: -  X certainly, divine, enchanter, (use) X enchantment, learn by experience, X indeed, diligently observe.

So what the Adam was really talking to was not in fact an actual serpent in the sense of a physical snake as we have today, but it was in fact the adversary (the identity of whom is a whole other discussion) which you pointed out above in your quotation of Rev. 20: 1-2. This is why I also asked the next question:

Gen 3:14 And saying is Yahweh Elohim to the serpent, "As you do this, most cursed are you of every beast, and of all field life. On your torso shall you go, and soil shall you eat all the days of your life.

So, the serpent originally had legs and feet and/or wings.

Apparently so…

After this point, the serpent was made to crawl on its belly instead. Does this lend itself more to a literal interpretation, or an allegorical one?

A literal one.

You don't have any problem believing, do you, Doc, that a real donkey spoke words to Balaam? Or that a fig tree withered overnight when Jesus cursed it? Or that He walked on water? Or that Jesus could read minds? Or that Phillip 'quantum leaped' after baptizing the Ethiopian? Or that the widow's small cruse of oil filled the many pots it was poured into? Or that an axe head floated? Or that Jesus was born of a virgin? Or that Jesus fed, variously, four thousand and five thousand men as well as women and children on a few very meager provisions? Or that the sun stood still, that is to say that the earth quit rotating, and then started up again, so Joshua could have enough time to win an important battle? Or that it rained forty days and nights such that all that water, combining with all the water that came up from inside the earth, covered the entire planet with water? Or that the Red Sea was divided by a strong wind and withdrew back on itself so the Israelites could walk over the dry sea bed to the other side? Or that there was a literal pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud during the day that guided the Israelites? Or that manna was literally bread from heaven? Or that the Hebrews clothes and sandals didn't wear out during the 40 year wandering? Or that Jehovah spoke to Moses from a bush that burned but wasn't consumed? Or that a very large gourd sprung up overnight to shade Jonah? Or that Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days and nights, even as Jesus referenced this to be a literal sign of what he was really going to do, that is, rise from the dead after three days and three nights (as the Jews counted within the Passover Week), a thing pretty fantastic in of itself, don't you think?

Or do you hold that these things are allegorical as well, simply because they are fantastic?

I don't have any problem believing that the God (or one of his agents) who created the universe could cause a donkey to speak to balaam, or any of those other things. My point is that the spiritual truth is often not reflected accurately by our cartoonish literal understanding of these things the way we were taught them in Sunday School.

I would suggest that the curse of the serpent above is allegorical or metaphorical rather than literal, in the sense that God is making a statement of punishment to the satan that has a figurative meaning rather than literally cursing an actual snake that was previously able to fly or walk on legs to crawl on the ground by transforming it into a slithering creature, rather than one that uses another form of locomotion. I think you actually pointed this concept out rather nicely yourself in the next section.

Gen 3:15 And enmity am I setting between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall hurt your head and you shall hurt his heel.

In what sense can 3:15 be taken literally?


Ahhhh! Good one! I will answer with a riddle: "What's a metaphor?" To put cows in! 

And so "What's an allegory?" isn't even a joke.

Don't confuse meataphor and allegory.

They are as different as a meadow is from a metaphor!

This quote is a prophesy that those 'in the know' call The Protevangelium, a $100.00 word that means 'the first evangel'. It is a prophesy of what God was going to do about what had just happened!
And no prophesy is ever allegorical! (Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?)
 
It is, therefore, told in a metaphorical way because the actuality of it would not be realized for some 4,000 years. (Notice that there is no mention of the cross and no mention of Bethlehem or of the murder of the innocents in this prophesy) Yet, there is the curious phrase "...emnity between your seed…" meaning the 'descendants' of Satan, "…and her seed" meaning those descended from her progeny. However, the woman does not produce seed, or sperm, but the male does. (And so descendants are counted from the male because of the nature of sex being that the man takes the woman to be his bride.) This, then, is implying that, somehow, the woman would conceive and have descendants without a deposit of sperm, at least without one from a human male.

Of course the scriptures abound with references derived from this 'first evangel':

For instance: Jesus' referring to the Pharisees as having the Devil for their father because they imitate his lying, false ways. And the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14 "…the virgin shall conceive…" implying that at the time of the Septuagint the Jews understood that the Messiah would be born of a virgin (even if they now deny this, saying, instead, that the word they formerly agreed should be translated 'virgin' in Isaiah is really 'unclear' because it could mean a married woman as well).

Of course, a crawling serpent would wound a heel, even as that heel, so wounded, could be then used to crush the head of the serpent that bit it. An exquisitely good metaphor for what would happen cosmically as Jesus took the sins of the Kosmos on Himself and was thus wounded with death in our place. And thus, the power of Satan, which is through sin, was destroyed even as Jesus entered the realm of the dead and snatched it's keys from Satan and after awakening them, preached the Gospel that he had accomplished the forgiveness of sins to the dead! WOW! And of course, many of them believed, even as they would have in life and were resurrected and went into the city of Jerusalem and showed themselves to many.

Fantastic!

Thus was the head of Satan crushed, even his power, which was in death because of sin.

So, yes, what I just said from history and from prophesy was very nicely summed up in this little phrase of Words about what Jehovah intended to do about the way things turned out in the garden, against what He intended to have happen- specifically, that The Adam would gain virtue, through trust in Elohim, before they got their conscience from the fruit of 'The Tree of Conscience' and thus make their conscience the powerful thing it was intended to be in and for all of us, the descendants of The Adam.

Pretty fantastic, eh?

As I said previously, you made the point rather nicely here. Metaphorical meanings are also 'non-literal' (symbolic) in my book, just as allegorical meanings are. But you're right, we should be more careful about the terms, because allegory is not the same as metaphor.

Gen 3:16 And to the woman He says, "Multiplying, yea, multiplying am I your grief and the groaning of your pregnancy. In grief shall you bear sons. "Yet by your husband is your restoration, and he shall rule over you.

What is the literal sense of the above verse (aside from the multiplication of grief and groaning of pregnancy)?

I believe that I explained that one in a foot note from Creation Hymn on the Hebrew phrase 'ezer kenegdo'.

I will, however, answer this question with a question: What did Paul really mean when He said this to Timothy:

"… (for Adam was first molded, thereafter Eve, and Adam was not seduced, yet the woman, being deluded, has come to be in the transgression). Yet she shall be saved through the child bearing, if ever they should be remaining in faith and love and holiness with sanity."
 
sozo de dia ho teknogonia is a curious phrase, or so I'm told, in the original Greek because of where the word dia, here translated as 'in' appears- rather than the Greek word en which truly means, in Greek, what we mean when we say "in".

Dia has a deeper meaning than en, such that if Paul had intended this passage only to reference Jesus' virgin birth, in an allegorical way, en would have sufficed.

But he choose dia… so what was Paul really trying to say here? For there is another legitimate way of understanding this verse, in Greek, that is quite literal even as it is fantastic! With proof for it's literal, but fantastic accuracy even in our modern times!

Ok. I can see that you get where I was going with that one.

Gen 3:22 And saying is Yahweh Elohim, "Behold! The human becomes as one of us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he stretch forth his hand, moreover, and take of the tree of the living, and eat and live for the eon--!

The above was the verse that I was referring to when I was talking about the tree of life, but it says live for the eon, not forever. Obviously, God did not want them living for the eon in their new state of being as "one of us, knowing good and evil". I don't have a specific question for you on this one, but I'd be interested in your take on its meaning.

 
The Tree of LIFE! What a glorious thing it is!
It's mere presence in the Garden raises the most difficult questions of all to answer when one approaches Genesis believing that Elohim knew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them.

And I asked these very questions in my first post to Tim. I asked, leadingly:

Why two trees??

And why create the Tree of Life at all if Elohim already knew, before He created them, that He was going to have to banish them from eating it?

Why doesn't His foreknowledge of their turning make The Tree of Life a superfluous creation, at best and a deception at worst?

And why does The Tree of life return in The New Heaven and The New Earth (The New Universe) where all things are reconciled and restored to Jehovah?

I can answer these questions very simply from knowing that Elohim did not know, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them.

Here, then, are my answers to my own questions

Why two trees??

Because the set-up in the Garden- and make no mistake, they were set-up-was intended to be a 'set up' to succeed not to fail.

The Tree of Life, from which they obviously were allowed to eat, was there because Elohim intended for them to 'pass the test'. And when they did, everything would already be there for them- including a tree whose 12 fruits and leaves were intended to be especially restorative to the physical needs of corporeal beings so that they could live age-enduring life- lives described in Isaiah as being as long as that of a tree.

Only the fatalistic mind of a Manichaean monk-turned-Christian could conceive the foreign idea that God intended the set-up to be nothing more than a glorified sting-operation diabolically designed to see them fall, because, apparently, He foreknew they would, anyway.

So, which came first the chicken or the egg? Did his foreknowledge that they would, in fact, 'fall' before He created them mean that they had no choice but to 'fall'?

Answer: "Yes."

Or was this set up intended to ensure that they would fall exactly as His foreknowledge said they would?

Answer: "Yes."

*sigh* It's a horrifying and hideous thing to fall into the hands of St Augustine's god.

Good thing he was wrong about Him.

And why create the Tree of Life at all if Elohim already knew, before He created them, that He was going to have to banish them from eating it?

Even a child can understand enough of the implications of believing that Elohim knew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to fall before He created them to ask this insightful question; a question to which no Calvinist has a ready, non-evasive answer.
 
And a question that has no meaning if, in fact, Elohim didn't know, as a fact, that The Adam were going to turn before He created them.

For there is another 'childish' question that every child can know to ask, readily enough, when they are taught Protestant theology and that is: "What about those who died before Jesus came and never heard the Gospel? Are they in hell, burning forever?

And so, what do those who hold dearly to Augustine's and Calvin's 'truth' say in reply?

You tell me.

I'll bet, though that it's even the same thing they say when you ask logical questions of them concerning the logic they use to arrive at the conclusion that Elohim knew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to fall before He created them.

Why doesn't His foreknowledge of their turning make The Tree of Life a superfluous creation, at best and a deception at worst?

Answer: It doesn't. If He foreknew they were going to turn, as a fact, before He created them then the Tree of Life is, at best, a superfluous creation and at worst part of a grand deception perpetrated by Elohim Himself, even as His foreknowledge makes Him the Architect and Administrator of every evil and every sin ever perpetrated by a human.

And so this question, too, has no meaning if Elohim did not know, as a fact, that The Adam was going to turn before He created them.

And why does The Tree of life return in The New Heaven and The New Earth (The New Universe) where all things are reconciled and restored to Jehovah?

Because the human beings living then will be just as corporeal as they are now and will need this special tree's 12 fruits and leaves to keep themselves healthy and to heal them when they become damaged from all the adventures they are going to have as they live out their eonian lives, lives as long as that of a tree, building, creating art, exploring, singing, dancing, writing stories and poetry, planting, harvesting, cooking, eating, talking, marrying, making love and raising children… in other words all the good things we humans are really good at doing while we praise and honor our God in everything we do.

It is, in Greek, an interesting phrase used in Revelation about the Trees of life (at least three of them)…

It is: "...phullon ho xulon eis therapeia ho ethnos."

Therapeia means 'therapy'; a different kind of healing than iaomai. And of course you recognize ethnos as being where we get the English word 'ethnic' from.

In other words, the tree's leaves are for the therapeutic healing of the ethnics.

And so, I, who am among the first to believe, while this age lasts, look forward to the redemption of my spirit and soul from this body to be resurrected into a new age-enduring body dwelling in The New Heaven's and it's New Earth- a literal re-creation that is on its way, even as this Heavens and it's Earth are passing by- where righteousness dwells in all, through virtue, even as the new human I am re-sired to be is being trained in righteousness, in this age, so that *I* will be living my age-enduring life as a good human in the eon to come where God, Himself is All and in All and the former things are never remembered.

I absolutely love being human!

And good, even as Jehovah, my Father, is good and exactly as I was created to be!

Be good, then, Doc, even as you, too, were created to be!

Dennis!

The only problem with this line of thinking in the first section here (aside from the apparent inconsistency of some of the things you've stated) is that if you're right that God set it up in Eden for them to succeed (in the short-term) rather than fail or fall, then that means that at the very least, God's foreknowledge is imperfect. But it would also mean that God is not in control of his creation, and therefore that he is really not sovereign, a concept that I am unwilling and unable to accept.

The problem with the second section is that if what you say is true about the function of the tree of life and our state of existence, then none of us ever truly puts on immortality and incorruption. We would merely always remain essentially mortal and corruptible and depend on something external to continue life. What's more is that scripture is explicit that we will not be married nor given in marriage, but will be as the angels in heaven. So we will clearly not be "making love and raising children" as you stated.

And: I cannot 'be good'. There is only One who is good. I do not have the ability of myself to be good.

[Eleutheros]

Thanks for your answers. I have given some thoughts about them below.

Hey there!

Thanks for the challenges! This is really what I've been looking for- a chance to test what I've concluded against the thoughts of another.

A request before I'm off to ponder and a few comments:

Could you link me to where you got this? Because, as you are probably aware, Strong makes no such mention of this- not that I think Strong is the ultimate authority. (And by the way do you know where there is a Concordant OT text available on the Internet?):

נחשׁ
nâchash
naw-khash'
A primitive root; properly to hiss, that is, whisper a (magic) spell; generally to prognosticate: -  X certainly, divine, enchanter, (use) X enchantment, learn by experience, X indeed, diligently observe.

We said:

Or do you hold that these (fantastic) things are allegorical as well, simply because they are fantastic?

I don't have any problem believing that the God (or one of his agents) who created the universe...

One of His agents?!? This is certainly something I've never heard before! Could I ask you to expound?

...could cause a donkey to speak to balaam, or any of those other things. My point is that the spiritual truth is often not reflected accurately by our cartoonish literal understanding of these things the way we were taught them in Sunday School.

Interesting turn of a phrase, Doc, "cartoonish literal understanding". As if to say that to think literally of the persons and events in scripture, well at least of those in Genesis, is to be cartoonish.

I don't mean that as a put down, really. I'm just noting that your phraseology reveals something to me of how you think. Even as you stated your point about literal interpretations prior to this:

The physical points to the spiritual, because the physical is the shadow of the spiritual. Is there reality and truth in the physical? Yes, but the higher reality and truth is the spiritual. The things that are seen (physical) are made from the things that are unseen (spiritual). The spiritual is the primary reality.

I know, however, that you're referencing the well known caricature of the Devil in a red suit with horns and pitchfork, or even a serpent in a tree. And Noah's ark with the smiling animals hanging out the windows happy to be so crammed inside as well as the other, sometimes strange, flannel-graph representations used to teach Sunday school.

Personally, I don't really picture what 'The Satan' looks like at all, except for working backward from the curse on him/it. And what the scriptures say about him being able to transform himself into an angel of light (interesting word there, transform) and how Revelation describes him.

Which, I admit, does paint a fantastic picture! But, as I pointed out, no matter how you slice it up between literal, allegorical or metaphoric, the Genesis account is a fantastic story of a time and reality that would be lost to us except for this account. And without it's historical and literal accuracy we would be stupid in our imaginings about where we came from and how we got to be where we are. Even if it is as you say that literal is only one layer of meaning.

And so that is why I want to 'get Genesis right'.

I would suggest that the curse of the serpent above is allegorical or metaphorical rather than literal, in the sense that God is making a statement of punishment to the satan that has a figurative meaning rather than literally cursing an actual snake that was previously able to fly or walk on legs to crawl on the ground by transforming it into a slithering creature, rather than one that uses another form of locomotion. I think you actually pointed this concept out rather nicely yourself in the next section.

Thank you for that compliment Doc! I receive it. Even though I do distinguish between the literal curse i.e. the Words spoken that actually transformed the serpent and the metaphoric words that describe what Jehovah was going to do, now, as a result of him/it's success in turning The Adam.

You commented on the summation of my answers to my own questions with this:

The only problem with this line of thinking in the first section here (aside from the apparent inconsistency of some of the things you've stated) is that if you're right that God set it up in Eden for them to succeed (in the short-term) rather than fail or fall, then that means that at the very least, God's foreknowledge is imperfect.

A very well drawn, very logical conclusion, Doc!

May I assume, then, that these apparent inconsistencies you see stem also from what you perceive I am doing, that is, making Jehovah's foreknowledge of the future imperfect?

Which is to also ask, "Could you agree that my account is, at the least, internally consistent for my assuming that Jehovah did not know, as a fact (however unbelievable that may sound to you) that The Adam was going to turn before He created them?" 

But it would also mean that God is not in control of his creation, and therefore that he is really not sovereign, a concept that I am unwilling and unable to accept.

Ah, well said. And I'm sure you speak on behalf of many millions of Believers when you say this.

I really don't expect any other reply because I know, well, how unconventional and even bizarre the conclusions I have drawn seem to those whose understanding of God was ingrained into them by the concepts shoe-horned into the original text to make it support the theology of St. Augustine and John Calvin- Many of which are concepts that those here at Tentmaker have learned to reject as untruthful by using logic and reason and literal interpretations to support their rejections.

Well, I am using logic and reason and a literal interpretation of the words in exactly the same way Tentmaker does to challenge the idea of that peculiar hell to show that where scripture speaks of God's foreknowledge, using the Greek words prognōsis and proginōskō that the writers are not teaching that Jehovah has foreknowledge of the future, but, of something else.

So what, exactly, do the scriptures say He 'foreknew', where these two related Greek words appear?

You've avoided answering this question, directly, several times now.

The problem with the second section is that if what you say is true about the function of the tree of life and our state of existence, then none of us ever truly puts on immortality and incorruption. We would merely always remain essentially mortal and corruptible and depend on something external to continue life. What's more is that scripture is explicit that we will not be married nor given in marriage, but will be as the angels in heaven. So we will clearly not be "making love and raising children" as you stated.

That is a very good point Doc! And I'm glad you brought that up because right there is something I'm still exploring!

For the prophesies in Isaiah 65 and 66 of The New Heavens and their New Earth describe a very corporeal, very human existence with babies being born and houses being built and even some humans, rare though it will be, dying, apparently for sinning! (Of course, I can imagine that you likely believe that where scripture speaks of The New Heavens and New Earth it's meant to be read allegorically or spiritually or anything else but literally. And that's OK. I know where your head is at and I can accept it.)
Seemingly against what Jesus said about the state of those in the resurrection being like "the messengers (angels) of God in heaven". (Note that He did not say that those resurrected would be sexless that is androgynous: The part about 'not marrying', etc. was in response to what prompted the scathing rebuttal He gave, namely the hypothetical situation concerning a widow and her deceased husbands set up by the Sadducees, who did not believe in a resurrection, to trap Him in His words.)

As for Paul's quote from his first letter to the Corinthians that you referenced above:

"Lo! a secret to you am I telling! We all, indeed, shall not be put to repose, yet we all shall be changed, in an instant, in the twinkle of an eye, at the last trump. For He will be trumpeting, and the dead will be roused incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. Now, whenever this corruptible should be putting on incorruption and this mortal should be putting on immortality, then shall come to pass the word which is written, Swallowed up was Death by Victory."

He also wrote this to Timothy:

"I am charging you in the sight of God, Who is vivifying all, and of Jesus Christ, Who testifies in the ideal avowal before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this precept unspotted, irreprehensible, unto the advent of our Lord, Christ Jesus, which, to its own eras, the happy and only Potentate will be showing: He is King of kings and Lord of lords, Who alone has immortality, (same word as above) making His home in light inaccessible, Whom not one of mankind perceived nor can be perceiving, to Whom be honor and might eonian! Amen!"

So the question is what did Paul mean by saying that God alone had immortality while at another time using the same word alongside a word that means 'incorruption' to describe what we will become when we are (ex)changed at the last trump- that which dies exchanged for immortal and that which is corrupted exchanged for that which isn't?

Answer I don't know. Do you?

I have something I'm contemplating but I'm gonna keep it close, for now, and see what answer you give, if any, to this.

And: I cannot 'be good'. There is only One who is good. I do not have the ability of myself to be good.

I was waiting for this reply, even as I know the theology that drives your thoughts!

Nope, I agree, by yourself you cannot be good, anymore than I can! But, with God, all things are possible! Even making dirty, rotten depraved sinners like us into righteousness loving do gooders!

Or, do you think Jesus saved you and gave you a cleansed conscience and re-sired you through holy spirit to keep on being bad so that God's grace may abound in you?

No! Of course not!

So, be good! Exactly as you were at least re-sired to be!

Besides, what's so wrong with saying that?

Because of what Jesus said to a young, rich Jewish man (of whom it is written that Jesus loved Him and thus challenged him, from His knowing his heart, concerning what is good to do that this young man might be perfect) who came to Jesus and falling at his feet in worship, sought to know of Him what he must do (according to law) to receive life aionian:

And lo! one coming to Him said, "Teacher, what good shall I be doing that I should be having life eonian?" Yet He said to him, "Why are you asking Me concerning good? One is good. Yet if you are wanting to be entering into life, keep the precepts." ...The youth is saying to Him, "These all I maintain. In what am I still deficient?" Jesus averred to him, "If you are wanting to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and be giving to the poor, and you will be having treasure in the heavens. And hither! Follow Me." Now, hearing this word, the youth came away sorrowing, for he had many acquisitions."?

I hope not! Because then you will be going against a ton of scriptures, figuratively speaking, that declare that you not only can be made righteous, through faith in Jesus Christ and the cleansing of your conscience, but must be righteous, which means, doing right or being good, to receive your own allotment of life aionian in the kingdom of God!

However, being raised a Calvinist myself, I do know what you mean, Doc. It's somehow anathema to think that you can be good, almost as if your thinking that you could be God.
So, I will add that, as long as you continue to hold to the Calvinistic conclusions that led you to reply as you just did, then I think you will not grasp anything of what I am saying.

(Note: I am not saying, Doc, that you are a Calvinist, even if, perhaps, you are. What I am saying is that you, like so many other Believers, raised on the KJV, often hold, unknowingly and therefore, unquestioningly, several of his theological conclusions to be 'gospel truth'- for instance "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" thingy! )

Besides, really, what's so bad about wanting to be good, Doc? Especially if it's Jehovah, the happy God, Who is operating in you to will as well as to work for the sake of His delight!

For what does God delight in but that you may be filled full with the realization of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding... to walk worthily of the Lord for all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the realization of God; being endued with all power, in accord with the might of His glory, for all endurance and patience with joy..."

Dennis!

[Doc]

Hey there!

Thanks for the challenges! This is really what I've been looking for- a chance to test what I've concluded against the thoughts of another.

A request before I'm off to ponder and a few comments:

Could you link me to where you got this? Because, as you are probably aware, Strong makes no such mention of this- not that I think Strong is the ultimate authority. (And by the way do you know where there is a Concordant OT text available on the Internet?):

נחשׁ
nâchash
naw-khash'
A primitive root; properly to hiss, that is, whisper a (magic) spell; generally to prognosticate: -  X certainly, divine, enchanter, (use) X enchantment, learn by experience, X indeed, diligently observe.

Yeah, I got it from Strong's concordance in my e-sword program. I have the concordant NT and OT text in my e-sword program as well. nachash is the Hebrew word that we translate "serpent"

We said:
Or do you hold that these (fantastic) things are allegorical as well, simply because they are fantastic?

I don't have any problem believing that the God (or one of his agents) who created the universe...

One of His agents?!? This is certainly something I've never heard before! Could I ask you to expound?

Angels. Sometimes God chooses to speak through a messenger.

Interesting turn of a phrase, Doc, "cartoonish literal understanding". As if to say that to think literally of the persons and events in scripture, well at least of those in Genesis, is to be cartoonish.

I don't mean that as a put down, really. I'm just noting that your phraseology reveals something to me of how you think. Even as you stated your point about literal interpretations prior to this:

In some cases, it is cartoonish, when we have study tools available that can show us the way that biblical words are translated isn't what they really mean at all. I'm simply demonstrating that when we read the English word "serpent", we automatically think "snake". But the Hebrew word literally means "hissing one that whispers (a magic spell). that does not suggest a literal snake. Do we have any other scriptural textual evidence that A&E were accustomed to speaking to animals and being spoken to by them?

The physical points to the spiritual, because the physical is the shadow of the spiritual. Is there reality and truth in the physical? Yes, but the higher reality and truth is the spiritual. The things that are seen (physical) are made from the things that are unseen (spiritual). The spiritual is the primary reality.

I know, however, that you're referencing the well known caricature of the Devil in a red suit with horns and pitchfork, or even a serpent in a tree. And Noah's ark with the smiling animals hanging out the windows happy to be so crammed inside as well as the other, sometimes strange, flannel-graph representations used to teach Sunday school.

Personally, I don't really picture what 'The Satan' looks like at all, except for working backward from the curse on him/it. And what the scriptures say about him being able to transform himself into an angel of light (interesting word there, transform) and how Revelation describes him.

Which, I admit, does paint a fantastic picture! But, as I pointed out, no matter how you slice it up between literal, allegorical or metaphoric, the Genesis account is a fantastic story of a time and reality that would be lost to us except for this account. And without it's historical and literal accuracy we would be stupid in our imaginings about where we came from and how we got to be where we are. Even if it is as you say that literal is only one layer of meaning.

And so that is why I want to 'get Genesis right'.


Thank you for that compliment Doc! I receive it. Even though I do distinguish between the literal curse i.e. the Words spoken that actually transformed the serpent and the metaphoric words that describe what Jehovah was going to do, now, as a result of him/it's success in turning The Adam.

You commented on the summation of my answers to my own questions with this:

The only problem with this line of thinking in the first section here (aside from the apparent inconsistency of some of the things you've stated) is that if you're right that God set it up in Eden for them to succeed (in the short-term) rather than fail or fall, then that means that at the very least, God's foreknowledge is imperfect.

A very well drawn, very logical conclusion, Doc!

May I assume, then, that these apparent inconsistencies you see stem also from what you perceive I am doing, that is, making Jehovah's foreknowledge of the future imperfect?

Which is to also ask, "Could you agree that my account is, at the least, internally consistent for my assuming that Jehovah did not know, as a fact (however unbelievable that may sound to you) that The Adam was going to turn before He created them?" 

I would say that it probably is internally consistent. But so is much of Calvinism, which you continually insist that I adhere to (even though I do not). I disagree with Calvin (and Augustine, for that matter) on a great many things, including the limitation of God's love to only the elect.

But it would also mean that God is not in control of his creation, and therefore that he is really not sovereign, a concept that I am unwilling and unable to accept.

Ah, well said. And I'm sure you speak on behalf of many millions of Believers when you say this.

I really don't expect any other reply because I know, well, how unconventional and even bizarre the conclusions I have drawn seem to those whose understanding of God was ingrained into them by the concepts shoe-horned into the original text to make it support the theology of St. Augustine and John Calvin- Many of which are concepts that those here at Tentmaker have learned to reject as untruthful by using logic and reason and literal interpretations to support their rejections.

Well, I am using logic and reason and a literal interpretation of the words in exactly the same way Tentmaker does to challenge the idea of that peculiar hell to show that where scripture speaks of God's foreknowledge, using the Greek words prognōsis and proginōskō that the writers are not teaching that Jehovah has foreknowledge of the future, but, of something else.

So what, exactly, do the scriptures say He 'foreknew', where these two related Greek words appear?

You've avoided answering this question, directly, several times now.

I have attempted to answer this question directly. Prognosis is a word that appears in two places in the New Testament; 1 Peter 1 and Acts 2

Acts 2: Act 2:22 Men! Israelites! Hear these words: Jesus, the Nazarene, a Man demonstrated to be from God for you by powerful deeds and miracles and signs, which God does through Him in the midst of you, according as you yourselves are aware -"
Act 2:23 This One, given up in the specific counsel and foreknowledge of God, you, gibbeting by the hand of the lawless, assassinate,
Act 2:24 Whom God raises, loosing the pangs of death, forasmuch as it was not possible for Him to be held by it."

So here in Acts 2 we have the foreknowledge of God specifically applied to the sacrifice of Christ.

1Pe 1:1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the chosen expatriates of the dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, the province of Asia, and Bithynia,
1Pe 1:2 according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father, in holiness of spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: May grace and peace be multiplied to you!"

Here in first Peter, Peter is an apostle according to the foreknowledge of God.

proginosko is used in more places in the New Testament, but only a few of them directly apply to God's foreknowledge, so I'll only quote the relevant ones:

Rom 8:28 Now we are aware that God is working all together for the good of those who are loving God, who are called according to the purpose"
Rom 8:29 that, whom He foreknew, He designates beforehand, also, to be conformed to the image of His Son, for Him to be Firstborn among many brethren."
Rom 8:30 Now whom He designates beforehand, these He calls also, and whom He calls, these He justifies also; now whom He justifies, these He glorifies also."

Here we have God's foreknowledge of the "saints".

Rom 11:2 God does not thrust away His people whom He foreknew. Or have you not perceived in Elijah what the scripture is saying, as he is pleading with God against Israel?

Here we have God's foreknowledge of "His people".

1Pe 1:17 And if you are invoking the Father, Who is judging impartially according to each one's work, you may behave, for the time of your sojourn, with fear,
1Pe 1:18 being aware that not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, were you ransomed from your vain behavior, handed down by tradition from the fathers,
1Pe 1:19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a flawless and unspotted lamb,
1Pe 1:20 foreknown, indeed, before the disruption of the world, yet manifested in the last times because of you, who through Him are believing in God,
1Pe 1:21 Who rouses Him from among the dead and is giving Him glory, so that your faith and expectation is to be in God."

Here we have God's foreknowledge of the blood of Christ before the disruption of the world.

That's as direct as I and it can get...

That is a very good point Doc! And I'm glad you brought that up because right there is something I'm still exploring!

For the prophesies in Isaiah 65 and 66 of The New Heavens and their New Earth describe a very corporeal, very human existence with babies being born and houses being built and even some humans, rare though it will be, dying, apparently for sinning! (Of course, I can imagine that you likely believe that where scripture speaks of The New Heavens and New Earth it's meant to be read allegorically or spiritually or anything else but literally. And that's OK. I know where your head is at and I can accept it.)
Seemingly against what Jesus said about the state of those in the resurrection being like "the messengers (angels) of God in heaven". (Note that He did not say that those resurrected would be sexless that is androgynous: The part about 'not marrying', etc. was in response to what prompted the scathing rebuttal He gave, namely the hypothetical situation concerning a widow and her deceased husbands set up by the Sadducees, who did not believe in a resurrection, to trap Him in His words.)

The prophecies contained in Isaiah and Revelation are both still referring to what occurs in time in the non-eternal state. The eternal state does not occur until sin and all death are no more. Until then, we're still dealing with time.

As for Paul's quote from his first letter to the Corinthians that you referenced above:

"Lo! a secret to you am I telling! We all, indeed, shall not be put to repose, yet we all shall be changed, in an instant, in the twinkle of an eye, at the last trump. For He will be trumpeting, and the dead will be roused incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. Now, whenever this corruptible should be putting on incorruption and this mortal should be putting on immortality, then shall come to pass the word which is written, Swallowed up was Death by Victory."

He also wrote this to Timothy:

"I am charging you in the sight of God, Who is vivifying all, and of Jesus Christ, Who testifies in the ideal avowal before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this precept unspotted, irreprehensible, unto the advent of our Lord, Christ Jesus, which, to its own eras, the happy and only Potentate will be showing: He is King of kings and Lord of lords, Who alone has immortality, (same word as above) making His home in light inaccessible, Whom not one of mankind perceived nor can be perceiving, to Whom be honor and might eonian! Amen!"

So the question is what did Paul mean by saying that God alone had immortality while at another time using the same word alongside a word that means 'incorruption' to describe what we will become when we are (ex)changed at the last trump- that which dies exchanged for immortal and that which is corrupted exchanged for that which isn't?

Answer I don't know. Do you?

I have something I'm contemplating but I'm gonna keep it close, for now, and see what answer you give, if any, to this.

I'm thinking this means that the immortality we will experience is part and parcel of God becoming all and in all. It is His immortal life that we will have, not our own.

I was waiting for this reply, even as I know the theology that drives your thoughts!

Nope, I agree, by yourself you cannot be good, anymore than I can! But, with God, all things are possible! Even making dirty, rotten depraved sinners like us into righteousness loving do gooders!

Or, do you think Jesus saved you and gave you a cleansed conscience and re-sired you through holy spirit to keep on being bad so that God's grace may abound in you?

No! Of course not!

So, be good! Exactly as you were at least re-sired to be!

Besides, what's so wrong with saying that?

Because of what Jesus said to a young, rich Jewish man (of whom it is written that Jesus loved Him and thus challenged him, from His knowing his heart, concerning what is good to do that this young man might be perfect) who came to Jesus and falling at his feet in worship, sought to know of Him what he must do (according to law) to receive life aionian:

And lo! one coming to Him said, "Teacher, what good shall I be doing that I should be having life eonian?" Yet He said to him, "Why are you asking Me concerning good? One is good. Yet if you are wanting to be entering into life, keep the precepts." ...The youth is saying to Him, "These all I maintain. In what am I still deficient?" Jesus averred to him, "If you are wanting to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and be giving to the poor, and you will be having treasure in the heavens. And hither! Follow Me." Now, hearing this word, the youth came away sorrowing, for he had many acquisitions."?

I hope not! Because then you will be going against a ton of scriptures, figuratively speaking, that declare that you not only can be made righteous, through faith in Jesus Christ and the cleansing of your conscience, but must be righteous, which means, doing right or being good, to receive your own allotment of life aionian in the kingdom of God!

However, being raised a Calvinist myself, I do know what you mean, Doc. It's somehow anathema to think that you can be good, almost as if your thinking that you could be God.
So, I will add that, as long as you continue to hold to the Calvinistic conclusions that led you to reply as you just did, then I think you will not grasp anything of what I am saying.

(Note: I am not saying, Doc, that you are a Calvinist, even if, perhaps, you are. What I am saying is that you, like so many other Believers, raised on the KJV, often hold, unknowingly and therefore, unquestioningly, several of his theological conclusions to be 'gospel truth'- for instance "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" thingy! )

Besides, really, what's so bad about wanting to be good, Doc? Especially if it's Jehovah, the happy God, Who is operating in you to will as well as to work for the sake of His delight!

For what does God delight in but that you may be filled full with the realization of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding... to walk worthily of the Lord for all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the realization of God; being endued with all power, in accord with the might of His glory, for all endurance and patience with joy..."

Dennis!

Well, at least we agree on that. It is His righteousness that we put on, not our own.

So to me, the statement "be good", is the logical equivalent of saying, "be kinder than necessary".

[eaglesway]

      Literal or figurative... I think the desire to become as God is the root of our quagmire. I see this as "wanting to take what God is already willing to give, and the attempt to take it in a measure God is not willing to give". We cannot see exactly as God sees, we see "through a glass darkly". If we accept the scriptures as God -breathed, at least in the original Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew,then we can accept(at least, I can ) that there was enough in all the major translations to lead seekers on a hunt that leads to the discovery of the truth of things obscured by translations. I found a syllogism, an absolute result of deductive reasoning in Eph 1; Colossians 1; Romans 11; and 1 Cor 15 that eliminated the possibility of an eternal tormenting hell, or a major annihilation of souls, before I began to study the ancient languages. In other words, I looked deeper because of things that were clearly declared in the shoddy translations.
   I believe that if the scriptures are God breathed, and "cannot be broken" (translation issues resolved of course) then...... if there are two apparently opposing truths I need to look deeper for the resolution where they come together. There is a strong relationship between literal and figurative understandings because all that is "seen" is the product of the unseen. That which happens in time is a manifestation of God's aionios purpose. The scriptures plainly declare the foreknowledge of God, the predestined purposes of God, and the responsibilty of free will. Paul's answer to man's questions about the justice(or seeming injustice) of this is "What is it to you if God created vessels for mercy and vessels for breaking." He was not saying it cannot be understood- he was saying who are you to question  the declared counsels of God or His eternal power and divine nature- rather, seek a deeper understanding. Theologians tend to be lazy, justifying one declared truth against another based on their limits and immaturity rather than understanding the simple truth that all mysteries require further "seeking". God is the rewarder of then that diligently seek Him.....but no one knocks who thinks they have already gone through the door. The unity of the faith is hidden in the mystery between predestination and free will, literalism and figurativism, law and grace, works and unmerited favor....all mysteries that resolve in the depths of knowing God.

     1Co 2:6-16  Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought:  (7)  But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:  (8)  Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  (9)  But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.  (10)  But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.  (11)  For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.  (12)  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.  (13)  Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.  (14)  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.  (15)  But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.  (16)  For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
 
  The way I see it (which is not necessarily the way it is, just my view) that God "created" according to His "kind intention" which he purposed through Christ, to generate a throng of friends(Abraham was the friend of God because he understood sacrifice) who would understand who He was and share in His abundance. In order to get there they must pass through chaos in order to see that "sacrificial love" is the essence of union and harmony. Seeing UR takes the stigma off predestination and foreknowledge(if you look a little deeper) because it reveals the context of His "kind intention which He purposed in Himself, the summing up of all things....in Christ". This is the mystery. The way that free will acts within the microcosm called "time", "kosmos" and "aion", according to the foreknowledge of God, is a deeper mystery than I have yet been able to fathom....but I see it in context of His overall purpose, which is an ocean, a river, a universe of spirits rejoicing in harmony and union and glorious freedom.

[Eleutheros]

Hey, Doc!
 
I'm sorry I've kept you waiting so long for this; I've been quite busy and had to do my research and typing in between my thinking. And it sure took a lot of thinking and research to write this reply! Most of the thoughts were already there, of course, just never flushed out and made specific; which, without you hanging in there with me this long, I would not have been motivated to do what it takes to get these thoughts in order.

And for that, I thank you.

Here, then, is my heart of thoughts. It was written in spurts with a lot of nascent axioms typed out and later nipped because what I was led to conclude from them was contradictory and unrevealing.

Hopefully, all of that effort will be transparent to you and this will be an effortless read. I was well challenged by you to examine my thoughts for truth and to discover that the understanding that is in me, as unique and contradictory as it seems to the Christian understandings that were derived from that ulterior motivated and therefore, deliberately mistranslated Latin-to-English text, is supportable in the original Greek and Hebrew text of The Words, to my own satisfaction.

A quick note: This first part of my reply was written in real time. I had decided, as a challenge to my understanding, to type out my discoveries as I researched your claim about the Hebrew word nacash. And that was because I had no foreknowledge of what I would find, since your challenge about the Hebrew word translated 'serpent' was one I had never heard before. The only thing I did, later, was to go back and perform a 'spell check' and insert the hyperlinks and BBCode so you could see what I was seeing as I researched what you made claim to be a fact.

And so, if it's not a day late and a dollar short, here we go!

Could you link me to where you got this? Because, as you are probably aware, Strong makes no such mention of this- not that I think Strong is the ultimate authority. (And by the way do you know where there is a Concordant OT text available on the Internet?):

נחשׁ
nâchash
naw-khash'
A primitive root; properly to hiss, that is, whisper a (magic) spell; generally to prognosticate: -  X certainly, divine, enchanter, (use) X enchantment, learn by experience, X indeed, diligently observe.

Yeah, I got it from Strong's concordance in my e-sword program. I have the concordant NT and OT text in my e-sword program as well. nachash is the Hebrew word that we translate "serpent"

Thanks for the info about e-sword. I'll look into it.

OK... this is very interesting! I'm exploring this as I type...The Bible software I use simply says that it means 'serpent' all 31 times it's used...
And many of those times it refers to a literal serpent, not just to the one that was in the Garden, like the literal and fiery ones God sent among the Hebrews in Numbers...

I just checked with my published 2001 update to Strong's and it says the same thing; nachash…  yep, your English spelling is right... Strong's # 5175... What Strong's # are you using? You didn't say... simply means 'serpent' and that it is a masculine noun…

OK.

I'm checking The Blue Letter Bible... Gesenius says: a serpent so called from it's hissing (see root) OK... The root is Strongs # 5172... Ahhhh! This is the word that you said is translated 'serpent'!  Interesting... the only difference between the two is the vowel points, which would change the pronunciation of the word... and that this word is a root verb not a noun!
Gesenius says it is: an onomatopoetic word, unused in Kal (Isn't 'Kal' a reference to the earliest and first form of the three forms of Biblical Hebrew?) meaning, exactly what you posted it meant, 'to hiss or whisper', specially used of the whispering of soothsayers…
And it's first appearance in The Words… Genesis 30:27, is some two thousand, or more years after the events of Genesis 1-3…  And this usage is somewhat unique from it's more consistent usage later on in that Laban uses it to reference the knowledge of God's ways that he got 'the hard way', so to speak.

So, if I'm understanding this right- like I said, I'm no language scholar- the first form of this Hebrew word spelled 'nun-cheit- shin' and pronounced 'naw-chash' (the guttural 'ch' with a short, hard 'a' and a truncated 's' similar to our word 'cash', if spelled with a 'k'- 'kash') is a noun that means a literal snake or serpent. And so because of what this literal serpent did; for what it did came first, even as the first appearance in Hebrew of this word is as a noun meaning 'serpent', the word also spelled 'nun-cheit- shin' but pronounced naw-chaasssh (the guttural 'ch' but soft and long on the 'a', with a lingering 's' similar to our pronunciation of the word 'cushion' if it were spelled with a 'k'- 'kush-on') became, in later forms of Hebrew and in Arabic (a much later language), a root verb for the act of divination and was intended to resemble the hissing sound of a snake in the pronunciation of it's final syllable.

And again, that usage came to be because of what the literal serpent did, beguile and seduce with flattering words, which is what soothsayers do. (It is not uncommon, in any language, to take a noun and turn it into a verb; we do it all the time in English. For instance the noun 'ship' is also a verb because of what a ship does.)

And that makes perfect sense given the expositions I found here and here.
 
Well, I don't know what else to say, Doc. If my information is correct- and I welcome a challenge to it's accuracy- your's is not. And so, likely, would be any logical conclusions that you build from this belief that the Hebrew noun of origin, pronounced naw-cash in the Genesis creation account, meant the same thing, back then, when this word was first used, that the root verb, derived much later from this noun and pronounced naw-kasssh, came to mean.

We said:

Or do you hold that these (fantastic) things are allegorical as well, simply because they are fantastic?

I don't have any problem believing that the God (or one of his agents) who created the universe...

One of His agents?!? This is certainly something I've never heard before! Could I ask you to expound?

Angels. Sometimes God chooses to speak through a messenger.

OK! Speak, yes. But create?!?

Doc, what else am I supposed to think you mean by saying this, other than that you believe it is possible that God spoke and it was the Angels who did the actual work of creation?

That sounds pretty fantastic to me!

However, as you wish! It makes sense to you. And since I am unfamiliar with the logic that led you to this conclusion, I certainly won't gainsay it for the sake of 'traditional' thinking!

Interesting turn of a phrase, Doc, "cartoonish literal understanding". As if to say that to think literally of the persons and events in scripture, well at least of those in Genesis, is to be cartoonish.
I don't mean that as a put down, really. I'm just noting that your phraseology reveals something to me of how you think. Even as you stated your point about literal interpretations prior to this:

In some cases, it is cartoonish, when we have study tools available that can show us the way that biblical words are translated isn't what they really mean at all.

Well, I'm sure you perceive that I've been doing exactly that all along! themilios means 'foundation', not katabole. Katabole means 'disruption'. And so the only English verses readily available to 'prove' that God knew, as a fact, that the Adam was going to turn before He created them, Rev 13:8 and 17:8, do not translate to the familiar belief that founds everything so many build their understanding of Jehovah on, namely, the thought that 'Jesus was crucified from the foundation of the world'! Which, belief, I conclude the KJV Calvinists wanted you to conclude, otherwise they'd have had no motive to make two Greek words mean exactly the same thing in English, anymore than they would have had motive to make three Greek words and one Hebrew word mean 'hell.'

I'm simply demonstrating that when we read the English word "serpent," we automatically think "snake". But the Hebrew word literally means "hissing one that whispers (a magic spell). that does not suggest a literal snake.

Well, it's up to you, now, to disprove what I discovered, at least to your own satisfaction, before you can continue to claim this as a fact.

Words mean things. And so, since no two words are exactly alike, there are correct and incorrect usages.

Do we have any other scriptural textual evidence that A&E were accustomed to speaking to animals and being spoken to by them?

No we don't. Even though we know some animals can learn to imitate human speech. But that doesn't prove your point, because, as a fact, even as I stated it before, without the Genesis account we would be found stupid for the things we would imagine to fill in the knowledge gap that exists as we try to answer the question of where we came from and how we got to be where we are.

Fortunately, though, we do have the literal and historical account in Genesis. So, at the least, we are without an excuse because, through this account- which gives us a complete and trustworthy, though admittedly fantastic story, when understood literally- we can, at least know that we are being stupid about our origins rather than being stupid and ignorant for not even knowing that we are being stupid!

And just to make sure that I'm not misunderstood- I am not saying anyone here on Tentmaker is being stupid or even ignorant. (Quite the contrary! I am here exactly because intelligent and studious humans, like you, Doc, are here- humans who have used logic and reason to discern the truth we call UR, exactly as I have, yet, have a different way of thinking than I do about other things and against whom I can test my way of thinking for accuracy and truth.) 

I was referring to exactly what I said before: Humans used to imagine a whole pantheon of gods as being responsible for creation and now many humans imagine that we evolved upward from...  whatever…  something lower (they're not even sure!) And in these things we demonstrate that we are stupid as we try to fill in the gap in our knowledge with imagination apart from a literal understanding of the Genesis account; which account is the only accurate, historical and truthful record we have of where we came from and how we got to be where we are!

And that is why I firmly believe that Genesis must be understood and believed literally, first, (no matter how fantastic the account may seem) before any other 'spiritual' layers of meaning are 'discovered'; just like in Jesus' parables.

"…Could you agree that my account is, at the least, internally consistent for my assuming that Jehovah did not know, as a fact (however unbelievable that may sound to you) that The Adam was going to turn before He created them?"

I would say that it probably is internally consistent.

Thank you!

But so is much of Calvinism,…

I agree. And with that statement you prove the very important point I was trying to make earlier when I was demonstrating how logic operates; for internal consistency is not proof of accuracy. Only accurate axioms and truthfulfacts will give you truthful and useful conclusions. Which means that any inaccurate axioms or any untruthful 'facts' will yield a conclusion, yes, but not a truthful and useful one (except for the purposes of deception), no matter how internally consistent the logic is.

This fact about logic eludes most and is one of the reasons why John Calvin, a brilliant logician (who likely knew the 'game' he was playing with The Words), got away, for so long, with what he wanted us to believe about God: Calvin was internally consistent in what he taught, except what he taught wasn't the truth. And what he did give us to believe about God turns out to be what we wanted to believe, like that peculiar hell, as long as he could give 'us' a way to believe that 'we' were exempt from it.

....which you continually insist that I adhere to (even though I do not). I disagree with Calvin (and Augustine, for that matter) on a great many things, including the limitation of God's love to only the elect.

What's interesting about this comment is that, I as I wrote out my last reply, I came to foreknow that you would be concluding that I was doing this. And for foreknowing this, I offered a clarification, even this:

(Note: I am not saying, Doc, that you are a Calvinist, even if, perhaps, you are. What I am saying is that you, like so many other Believers (myself included), raised on the KJV, often hold, unknowingly and therefore, unquestioningly, several of his theological conclusions to be 'gospel truth'- for instance "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" thingy! )

I am very sorry, though, that I left you frustrated here, Doc. I should have worked that clarification in earlier.

What I was really trying to do, however, was demonstrate a very simple point that I can now sum up for having presented most of my case:

Christians believe that Jehovah knew, as a fact, that the Adam was going to 'fall' before He created them because St Augustine and John Calvin wanted us to believe this because it was needed for us to believe this to be a fact so we would could believe that peculiar hell existed!

In other words, the one 'fact' supported the other 'fact' such that if either one is false the other will be false. And that is why internal consistency is no proof of truth.

And so, through translational trickery, they made The Words say what they wanted them to say so that we would believe what they wanted us to believe! And as I said earlier, what they gave Christians to believe about God, the majority of them wanted to believe, anyway.

A very exclusive club is what Calvinism gives us. And He was gracious enough to give us all the thoughts we would need to believe that it's all God's doing- that it's His fault, if you will- that this exclusionary Believers Club is so exclusive.

After all, weren't we taught that it was 'foreknown' by Jehovah, 'from the foundation of the world', which humans would be saved and which wouldn't?

And so I see this thought carried over into those with a UR mindset, only slightly altered, to be that Jehovah knew, as a fact, 'from the foundation of the world', that we would need to saved. Period.

And so, Jehovah sent Jesus, not to save just a relatively few humans from that peculiar hell, so that they could be His Son's bride, but to save all of us from...  what?

What did He send His Son to save us from?  (He asked with a knowing smile!)
 
So, Doc, being the non-Calvinist you say you are for having rejected everything else he and that misanthropic Saint told Believers to think about your God, it seems that the only thing left, now, for you to decide, for hanging in there with me this far, is whether what the scriptures actually say Jehovah 'foreknows' is, indeed, what St. Augustine and John Calvin wanted you to conclude Jehovah foreknew, specifically, that He knows the future as a fact (as if it had already happened) and therefore,  He knew, as a fact, that The Adam was going to 'fall' before He created them.

And so, if you are still willing to entertain my persistent insanity, here we go.

But it would also mean that God is not in control of his creation, and therefore that he is really not sovereign, a concept that I am unwilling and unable to accept.

I've been pondering this that you said from our last round…  Doc, are you a chess player? Have you ever played someone with a Master rating? I have. He tore me up!! And I am not a weak player! This man ruled over the chess board as he not only played me but 15 others, simultaneously. And he won all of the games!

This man was sovereign, he reigned supreme over those boards and none could outsmart him or outmaneuver him while he, on the other hand, seemed to be able to got me and everyone else, at the same time, to move like he wanted me and them to! From my perspective it was uncanny... almost like he foreknew how I was going to move.

So, do you think any human could win a game of chess against God? No, of course they couldn't. But NOT because He 'foreknows', as a fact, what you are going to do next, but because what He foreknows is the game. And soon enough He will have you on the defensive and thus making the moves He would want you to make so He could win.

God would truly be the Ultimate Grand Master, ruling and reigning with unquestioned sovereignty over the game. Not because he knows every move you will make in advance, as a fact, but because He knows the game, intimately. Thus, He will win every time. And when the sovereign God Who rules and reigns over the universe that He created and thus knows very well, including all the souls in it, wins-not necessarily because He foreknows what everybody is going to do before they do it, but because he knows The Game and therefore exactly how to lead you and everyone else, simultaneously, into seeing that Truth that He is through experiencing His love and forgiveness- everybody wins! Literally!

Does this parable help you to see "foreknowledge" a little differently?

I said of your previous above reply:

I really don't expect any other reply because I know, well, how unconventional and even bizarre the conclusions I have drawn seem to those whose understanding of God was ingrained into them by the concepts shoe-horned into the original text to make it support the theology of St. Augustine and John Calvin- Many of which are concepts that those here at Tentmaker have learned to reject as untruthful by using logic and reason and literal interpretations to support their rejections.

Well, I am using logic and reason and a literal interpretation of the words in exactly the same way Tentmaker does to challenge the idea of that peculiar hell to show that where scripture speaks of God's 'foreknowledge', using the Greek words prognōsis and proginōskō that the writers are not teaching that Jehovah has foreknowledge of the future, but, of something else.
So what, exactly, do the scriptures say He 'foreknew', where these two related Greek words appear?
You've avoided answering this question, directly, several times now.

I have attempted to answer this question directly.

Yes, Doc, you did give an answer before, an indirect one, yes. But this that you gave here is answering it directly.

However, I'm going to have to flip the order in which these quotes were addressed because I now realize, after much careful consideration of your reply and how I will need to type out my thoughts, that these quotes with the word prognōsis will be better grasped after I give my reasoning using the quotes were proginōskō appears, first.

Here, then, are your comments on these quotes where proginōskō appears:

Proginosko is used in more places in the New Testament, (than prognosis)but only a few of them directly apply to God's foreknowledge,  so I'll only quote the relevant ones:

 
Well, I perceive then that you looked up the quotes and gave them all a good read through!

I would think, though, that all the quotes would be relevant to understanding the usage of the word proginōskō.

But, yes, you are right. There are two other quotes in the words that use the word proginōskō. And they are relevant to understanding because in these two other quotes, where this word is used, we can gain a proper understanding of the usage of proginōskō ; for these quotes declare that humans can 'foreknow'  in pretty much the same way that God does, from intimate experience and acquaintance.

First, though, I need to uncover for you the now familiar knavery of John Calvin, even as I have done all throughout this thread.

There are five other Greek words, besides proginōskō, that  are translated by King James' interpreters with the English verbs 'know' and 'knew'; and not incorrectly so, even if the accuracy is questionable on a number of them. However, a thorough treatment of the 'what' and the' why' of this, I've found, by investigation, would be long and unproductive and unnecessary here, except to say that by this much repeated use of the verbs 'know' and 'knew', when in some places words like 'perceive' and 'recognize'  are more accurate, they, in effect, made the Greek verb proginōskō a standout and especial word in the places where they chose to translate it with the made-from-scratch, compound English verbs 'foreknow' and 'foreknew'- thus causing the English reader to conclude that God has 'foreknowledge'.
 
Which He does, but of what? The future? Yes, but indirectly. I believe that the immediate future is knowable to Him. But 'The Future' was not 'foreknown' to Him from either being a fact, played out to Him before it was played out (talk about fantastic!), or, as a highly detailed, planned out and executed, known- from- the- foundation- of- the- world act, (like John Calvin wanted us to think), even as the Greek words will reveal, in context, exactly what He does have foreknowledge of and can, through that, 'foreknow' the immediate future.

So, that being said, I will focus down on exactly how John Calvin practiced his knavery on the two Greek verbs that are relevant.

Both of them are derived from the Greek verb ginōskō. They are epiginosko and proginōskō.

After studying what I linked you to, I think you will note that epiginosko means, more accurately, 'to perceive' and 'to understand by becoming acquainted with'; hence it can mean 'to ascertain knowledge'. And that it is an intimate word even as the Greek word ginosko is also used to describe our sexual joining, not just as an act, but, to convey how, when we make love, we gain intimate knowledge of our spouse.

And so we should expect to find that proginōskō is also a word that describes knowledge gained intimately.

However, what the King James interpreters did to hide this intimate knowledge from you, the English mind, was to translate differently the two other times the word proginōskō appears with only the much overused verb 'knew' in Acts 26:5 and with the more declarative, but still misleading phrase, 'know these things before',  in 2 Pet 3:17.

And so the Calvinists made these two other places seem to be saying something different, even something less than what The Words would say if they had chosen to use those especial words 'foreknow' or 'foreknew'; words that they deliberately held in reserve to translate proginōskō only where the context can be twisted to lead you to conclude something different than what you would have concluded if they had no ulterior motive but to translate The Words accurately and consistently; rather than to interpret The Words so that they were forced into confirming the ugly theology of the Saint and his toady.

Here, then, are those two other KJV verses with me translating proginōskō using their words 'foreknew' and 'foreknow' :

"My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; which foreknew me (KJV 'knew') from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee."  Acts 26:5

And

"Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye foreknow these things (KJV 'know these things before'), beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness." 2Peter 3:17

So what did these quotes tell you about the usage of this word and what these humans they are referencing had 'foreknowledge' of?

Well, it's not the future.

In the first case it was the Jews who 'foreknew' Paul to be a very good Pharisee.

What does that mean? How can this be made to make sense?

Answer: "… which knew me before, from the beginning, if they would testify…)

In the second quote it was that the Jewish believers foreknow that destruction comes on those unlearned and unstable souls who twist the scriptures.

Why does this make sense? Answer: Because they're acquainted with what Peter is writing about and so they know, from before, 'foreknow', what happens to those who twist scripture.)

As an aside observation and an important one, even A. E. Knoch's CLV avoids using the misleading words 'foreknew and 'foreknow' here, in these two verses, even though they readily use it in those other verses. A fact I found very disappointing, considering the claim made to this being a concordant translation; for there is no logically justifiable reason, from the Greek text, that I could find, for them to do this, other than a pre-conceived notion.

Truly and of truth, I am treading on the sacrosanct.

END OF PART ONE