The Bible

[pat]

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Kingkai wrote:
3) More importantly, you are completely wrong in your assessment that ancient conceptions of representation are not clearly present in the passage itself, as the apostles themselves, possessing the Holy Spirit, stand as its representatives. There’s no theophany in this passage, no mention of tongues of fires or doves or anything else - in other words, there is no evidence that the Holy Spirit is there at all, EXCEPT for the words of the apostles. Ananias and Sapphira lie to the apostles, but since the apostles are the representatives of the Holy Spirit, An. and Saph. are REALLY lying to the Spirit.

And once again, I am not denying that this passage could indicate that the Holy Spirit is God; I am simply pointing out that there are alternative possibilities, and your claim that “the text says nothing about representation” is false both at the textual and contextual levels.
[/quote]

Certainly an inference, but in 4:31 we are met with the scene that they are filled with the Holy Spirit which then leads directly in to the next scene. By the process of elimination, one could only be lead to the one conclusion. The apostles are not God, the only other divine character mentioned was the Holy Spirit, therefore of all those present the only one that can claim status as God is the Holy Spirit. The inference is strong if not direct. What other conclusion could be drawn?
[/quote]

You missed the point, Pat. Narrative criticism is a particular method of biblical studies that examines the function of narratives within larger works, the constituent and distinctive elements of narratives, etc. One of the first questions a narrative analysis of the text asks is, “who are the primary actors?” Is the Holy Spirit the primary actor, i.e., is this a story about the Holy Spirit?
[/quote]

The point is not about whether or not the Holy Spirit was a primary actor in the story, the point is what the story says about the Holy Spirit, whether or not he was a primary character in event. And unless Peter or one the apostles has the ability to make people drop dead, then the Holy Spirit had a role. Even if the Holy Spirit isn’t the main focus of the story, it still speaks to His nature. I am not arguing the plot and purpose of the story.

Acts 5:1-5 is part of a larger section - Acts 4:32-5:11, the focus of which is the the generous nature of the Christian community, as all members shared everything in common. In response to your likely skeptical retort, “you don’t know that; no one knows that,” I’ll say (1) Luke, like every other narrative text, is organized along thematic lines; (2) authors of narrative texts in antiquity (we actually have treatises from antiquity explaining how to craft arguments, compose narratives, write historiography, etc.) always exercised selectivity in their choice of the narratives to include; (3) the themes organizing particular sections can be deduced from the narratives chosen; (4) the scholars are unanimous in their recognition of Luke 4:32-5:11 as a single unit.

Anyway, 4:32-5:11 has to foci - the generous nature of the apostolic community, and the authority of the apostles within that community. We are then exposed to two examples along these lines, the first being the positive story of Barnabas, who sold his field and gave the entirety away to the church community (4:36-37), and the latter being the negative example of Ananias and Sapphira (5:1-5:11). So the Holy Spirit isn’t the main character of 4:32-37, or 5:1-11. The main characters of 5:1-11 are the apostles and the wicked couple. They are the focus, not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is mentioned in an ancillary role, and he is represented by the apostles.

It doesn’t say the Holy Spirit was represented by the Apostles. Who was it that made Ananias and Sapphira drop dead? Peter, John, or the Holy Spirit? The Peter gave no command that either should drop dead. So by what power did this occur?

All this matters because, since you didn’t understand the theme of the larger narrative, you completely missed the fact that this ancient concept of representation is absolutely and clearly a foundation of this story. The Holy Spirit is an ancillary character; he is only mentioned in the speech of the apostles. If you took out Peter’s reference to the Holy Spirit, you would simply be left with Peter’s claim that, “You have not lied to men, but to God.” If the reference to the Holy Spirit in verse 3 were taken out, how would you explain Peter’s comment? My point is that, while the Spirit’s presence could theoretically be inferred from 4:31, one would not make the inference that the HS (mentioned in a prior section of the work and not treated as a primary actor here OR there) was the “God” being referred to unless one started from the assumption that the HS IS God.

5:3 - Peter mentions Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit.
5:5 - Peter mentions Ananias lied to God.

The reference was to one thing, not two.

Take out the reference to the Spirit, and does the passage still make sense? Totally, from a Greco-Roman perspective - Peter is functioning as God’s representative, so a lie to him is a lie to God. This would make perfect sense in the cultural context in which Luke composed his narratives. So my point stays the same with the reference to the Holy Spirit - if one doesn’t ASSUME (as you do) from the outset that the Holy Spirit is God, one could just as easily interpret this passage as stating that the Holy Spirit sent from God functions as God’s representative. Thus, Acts 5:1-5 is NOT a slam-dunk case for the Holy Spirit’s divinity; there are other possible explanations that worked JUST AS WELL in a Greco-Roman context.

Take out the reference to the Holy Spirit and the passage is utterly meaningless with no purpose. You cannot take it out because the passage is something totally different.

And who has the power to take life with out lifting a finger? Man cannot do such things, only God can.

You don’t have to have foreknowledge of who the Holy Spirit is for to draw that conclusion from that passage.

2. Once again, you do not understand the difference between high and low context. High context communication leaves gaps in the narrative that need to be filled with contextual (specifically, cultural-historical) information. It doesn’t MATTER if the text lacks a specific statement like, “here, dear reader, fill in our understanding of representation;” high context texts were written under the expectation that the readers would automatically fill in that information. This is hermeneutics 101, Pat - if an author from 2000 years ago read the sentence, “I paused at the stop sign before driving on,” he would have NO idea what a “stop sign” is; but what author today would write out a detailed description of a stop sign and its functions? Again, he would assume his audience would fill in the gaps; so why do you seem to think that ancient authors would be any different?

I don’t know if they would be any different or not. Culturally certainly they were closer. But they are men and not infallible in interpretation or understanding anymore than any other. But what they had in cultural connection, they lacked in full knowledge. If they knew then what is known now, would they have said the same things? Of course I am not claiming we have full knowledge either, but we definitely have more information.

Lol once again with the favorite refrain, “you don’t know; no one knows.” Pat, technically, no one “knows” anything when it comes to historical research. What we have are probabilities, and once you’ve read as many ancient texts as I have and seen what scholars who have read far MORE texts than I have also see in these texts, you’d realize that, across the board, ancient authors didn’t compose their texts with the expectation of later audiences’ temporal and cultural distance. You’re spoiled because you have translations, where all the REAL difficulties are ironed out for you. You don’t realize that even the author’s word choice and syntax indicate that these authors didn’t foresee YOU reading them and try to accommodate that. Look at the reference to “Solomon’s colonnade” in 5:12, a section of the temple we know very little about. Luke doesn’t offer an explanation or further description; he simply assumes that his readers will be familiar with the locale.

I never said they did, in fact I have said the complete opposite. I never once said any of those writers had anything in mind other than the audience they intended to read it.

And yes, it matters if you are trying to express what was in somebodies head when you really don’t know, heck you don’t even know who’s head it is. And it’s fine if you are expressing 'probably’s and 'likely’s. But if you are speaking in definite terms, “No, this author wasn’t thinking that.” or that it only occurs in a certain way under certain circumstances, because others who are temporally and culturally closer to that time period did it that way, is not actually evidence.
Mind reading has an extremely high margin of error.

And once again, this stuff about us possessing knowledge they didn’t is itself questionable.

No it’s not. There is more information available now, then their was then, period. Whether you are Christian or Jew, you still have more info to work with than the ancients. It’s a natural evolution of knowledge.

I’m constantly surprised that so many Christians go spelunking in the biblical text, searching for every single reference they can find that even HINTS at a belief in Jesus’ divinity or God’s triune nature, and yet seem to forget that, in Jesus’ world, claims of Christ’s divinity or God’s triune nature would have often been considered blasphemous.

That’s why they crucified Him. They did consider it blasphemous.
And there is nothing wrong with searching the old texts for hints. The certainly didn’t agree with Jesus, and did not intemperate Isaiah 61:1-2, 58:6, Ps 146, etc. the way Jesus did, but wanted to cast him from the cliff. Who was right?

But if that’s the case, WHY don’t we find our apostles wrestling with this fact, constantly endeavoring to PROVE it in their texts? The Jews would have been wrestling with it harder than ANYONE. This belief would CERTAINLY have required some proof, so why is that nearly every statement about Jesus’ divinity or God’s triune nature is made in passing? Could it not be that they had an explanation for why they used language that implied the divinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that we just don’t know about? That our formulation “three persons with one nature” is just an attempt to reconstruct an answer they already had, and THAT’S why that which we struggle with was for them simply an assumption?

Beat’s me, maybe they felt it so obvious it didn’t need to be explained. Maybe the intended audiences took such matters as a given and it did not need to be delved into. Maybe they just weren’t really smart.

No, Pat, we don’t KNOW how the divine ontology works - all we can get from Scripture is that there were three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) who are called God, but there’s still only one God, and yet the Father seems to be the one in charge.

And that’s all we need.

We have NO mention of “economic vs. imminent” trinity; such distinctions are merely an attempt to deal with the problems created by our choice to canonize a Greek philosophical account of the divine ontology. So what KNOWLEDGE do we possess that they didn’t? What you mean is, we believe X to be the proper interpretation of the various passages that touch on God’s nature.

And they believed Y to be the proper interpretation of various passages that touch on God’s nature. It does not stand to reason the just cause they are really old, doesn’t mean it’s right or the only right way.

That’s a pretty bold statement. How do we know we have the right perspective now versus them? Who says their perspectives were false? I haven’t heard the claim that they beleived the OT was written just for them, until you just said that. Quite frankly I don’t have any reason to believe that’s true, nor that they were working under false assumptions.

LOL do you think that I just spout stuff thoughtlessly? I’ve been doing my research for years,

You’ve made that point several times.

Pat, and I meant what I said at two different levels. First of all, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, Athanasius - all believed that the meaning of the OT was unlocked by the Christ-event, that the texts could only be understood by those with knowledge of Christ.

In that the New was the fulfillment of the old, I’d say they are right. And to fully understand the old, it’s best understood as fulfilled rather than not fulfilled.

At another level, it has only been over the last few centuries that the myth derived from antiquity, the myth of intellectual objectivity, has been dispelled.

If you arguing that it’s objective now, then your still mired in that ancient myth.

When you’ve spent time reading through the writings of the church fathers, you realize pretty quickly that they bought into many of the cultural assumptions of their time, including the inherent supremacy of Greek thought. Their defenses of the OT frequently are comprised of attempts to justify its “poor” style; one church father even argued that the lack of discernible meter in the Greek translations of the Psalms was the fault of the translator, that the original Hebrew HAD clear meter, a claim that is absolutely, unequivocally false. Rather than recognizing that these texts were written at a different time in place, that the conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric and poetry were neither universal nor inherently ideal, the church fathers generally shared the all-too relative assumptions of their culture. In short, they took a LOT for granted in their exegesis; the things they point out as “problematic” in the OT we can often chalk up to their unrecognized cultural elitism. They evince minimal recognition of the kind of historical distance you and I take for granted.

So my statement is true on two levels - first, many believed the true meaning of the OT Scriptures were available only to men like themselves, i.e., Christians; secondly, they did not analyze their most basic presuppositions.

Sounds like a convenient ways to dismiss their analysis without first figuring out if the proposed propositions are actually true.
Did you find their conclusions therefore false? Or should they be outright dismissed because they did not do the same kinds of research of looked at the same things?

[quote]

And what we mean by the Trinity is NOT derived from Scripture; it is an attempt to explain the phenomena of Scripture as well as the ongoing and morphing traditions of the church. Scripture nowhere states that God is three persons sharing a single nature; that is an attempt to explain the varied descriptions of God in the NT using the categories of Greek philosophy.

The phenomena in scripture is the source of it. Again by reduction we are either force to believe some parts of scripture are false, or that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all God. I don’t see any difference in the dogma of the Trinity from what is expressed in scripture. [/quote]

And again, I’m not denying the Godhood of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; I’m simply pointing out that the way we understand their ontological relationship is NOT derived from Scripture, NOR is it self-evident, NOR is it necessary.

I don’t know what your concept of Trinity is. Simply that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all manifestations of God is not different from what scripture says. It just makes it a concise statement.

[pat]

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
In regard to man being made in Gods image is this meant to be physical or some kind of spiritual image? I ask because if we were made in God’s Image why do aliens look different (if we except they exist and look how they are described)? Do you all believe they are false descriptions and if they exist would look human?

If this does not belong here I will start a new thread I just recall it being discussed earlier in the thread.[/quote]

Lot’s of theories of what this actually means, least of what it infers is physical appearance.

[Tiribulus]

[quote]Legionary wrote:<<< Perhaps King Kai and some of the Catholic posters can weigh in?[/quote]See? They’re lumpin you in together already your highness. =D I’ll try n be back later. We have a Mi. Right to Life meeting tonight at our church. Christianity today (which is very aptly and tragically named) has had a writer of theirs hangin around. I guess that’s ok.

[Legionary]

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]Legionary wrote:<<< Perhaps King Kai and some of the Catholic posters can weigh in?[/quote]See? They’re lumpin you in together already your highness. =D I’ll try n be back later. We have a Mi. Right to Life meeting tonight at our church. Christianity today (which is very aptly and tragically named) has had a writer of theirs hangin around. I guess that’s ok.
[/quote]

Well, King Kai because of his academic training, Catholics because of the influence Catholicism has had on me, and you, because as much as we disagree at times, your opinions are always insightful:)

[Karado]

Interesting, hey what’s the best Bible to own anyway, is there even a “best” Bible at all?
Prolly not, but The Great Theologian Kirk Cameron is on TV now hawking something called
a “Geneva Bible”, essentially the Bible that made America, I’m kinda familiar with it,
all kinds of insightful footnotes in it, etc.
Is this a good Bible to have? Please tell me quick because ‘Captain Kirk’ sez we may all beam up
at any moment to sidestep the tribulation…Thank you!

[Tiribulus]

[quote]Legionary wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]Legionary wrote:<<< Perhaps King Kai and some of the Catholic posters can weigh in?[/quote]See? They’re lumpin you in together already your highness. =D I’ll try n be back later. We have a Mi. Right to Life meeting tonight at our church. Christianity today (which is very aptly and tragically named) has had a writer of theirs hangin around. I guess that’s ok.
[/quote]

Well, King Kai because of his academic training, Catholics because of the influence Catholicism has had on me, and you, because as much as we disagree at times, your opinions are always insightful:) [/quote]Well thank you sir. That’s very kind of you. I have considered our exchanges to be meaningful and substantive as well. My rejection of the deuterocanonical books as divinely inspired is pretty much the standard protestant one/s. I am also not qualified to say a whole lot about individual books in that group as I’ve never studied them. (not really)

[Karado]

I’m reading out of curiosity a Catholic Booklet called “Scripture Alone?” By Joel Peters,
WOW, I had no idea…powerful arguments against Sola Scriptura…I can’t refute these arguments!
Son of a bitch…how does one answer an author that makes King Kai look stupid?
Sorry KK.

[Tiribulus]

I’m going to go ahead and guess that I won’t be nearly as impressed as you are. “Sola scriptura” is one of the most consistently caricatured and misrepresented protestant doctrines of all. Here’s a tip from someone who has read works from dozens of various religious groups. Most of them can make a case that looks impressive to someone who is not grounded anywhere. That is not an insult Karado. You are simply not in a place to reliably evaluate something like this. If you hate me now I’ll feel bad, but I have feeling I’m not the only one who will think this.

Sola scriptura is not even necessary for a protestant campaign against Catholicism. I take that weapon away from them every time. I don’t believe that anything can be true that is contradicted by the scriptures. That’s not the same as saying that nothing can be true that is not in the scriptures. Which is usually what Catholics mistake “Sola Scriptura” to be advancing.

[pat]

[quote]Karado wrote:
Interesting, hey what’s the best Bible to own anyway, is there even a “best” Bible at all?
Prolly not, but The Great Theologian Kirk Cameron is on TV now hawking something called
a “Geneva Bible”, essentially the Bible that made America, I’m kinda familiar with it,
all kinds of insightful footnotes in it, etc.
Is this a good Bible to have? Please tell me quick because ‘Captain Kirk’ sez we may all beam up
at any moment to sidestep the tribulation…Thank you!
[/quote]

I prefer Bibles that were retranslated in a word for word (as close as is possible fashion) vs. thought or meaning translations, or translations of translations. The two I like the best are ESV and NRSV translations.

[pat]

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:

Quite frankly neither you nor I nor anybody else knows what was in the author’s head at the time of writing. We don’t know how many wadded up piles of papyrus landed on the floor. We also don’t know what he knew and did not know. We also don’t know his thought’s, feelings or understanding about that or anything else. So you are assuming all of it, period. You just don’t know, neither do I, neither does anybody else.
[/quote]

First of all, you missed how the comment below renders your first paragraph above irrelevant…

And for the record, there is a distinction between a text’s implied author and the actual author. I am not saying we can know the thoughts of the actual author; I’m saying that the implied author, as a construct of this ancient text, clearly reflects ancient Near Eastern conventions and reading patterns.

I know you revel in the whole “ambiguity” thing, but these kinds of arguments get really tedious, really fast. We’re dealing in probabilities. Once again, since the implied author is a discernible construct of the text, we actually can get insight into the purposes of this implied author. I don’t have to know the thoughts, feelings, etc., of the actual human author to know (1) language precedes the individual, determining what his “meanings” can be; (2) writing was massively expensive, so people didn’t put stylus to papyrus until they were CERTAIN of what they would write (they used wax tablets for rough drafts); (3) there is no evidence in the Hebrew Bible that any of the authors knew about the Trinity, so until such evidence turns up, why should I believe they knew about it? Given that I have no evidence that they knew of the Trinity, why should I read it in instead of something they likely knew?

Now maybe that was a horrible analogy, but since you do not believe divine inspiration happens in any of the potential ways that have been mentioned, how them does divine inspiration occur?

Rather than telling me ‘it didn’t happen that way’ (which you actually don’t know how it happened, nor does anyone else, tell me what divine inspiration is, how it occurs and what the ‘rules’ are regarding it.
That will be a great deal more helpful than ‘No, you don’t know shit’.

LOL pat, I’ve repeatedly told you what you don’t know. Your comment above makes it sound like I simply deny things without offering counter claims. I’ve been offering counter claims since they beginning!

This is a question of authority, Pat. Simple as that. From whence do we derive our authority? You seem to think that you can have a rational discussion about the meaning of biblical texts without referring back to this question. Why do we believe as Christians what we believe? Because we believe the earliest Christians (i.e., the apostles and those they taught) believed fundamentally the same things. Questions of doctrinal development and Christ’s supposed promises of infallibility aside, this is a point shared by both Protestants and Catholics alike - we believe what we think our best evidence suggests the earliest Christians believed.

We don’t have a systematic treatise detailing how the earliest Christians or the Jews defined inspiration, so we have to look at the implications of their statements about inspiration. And what we consistently find is (1) they believed the human authors knew what they were writing and (2) that human and divine intent were one. A further point of note is that the earliest Christian authors link the authority of the NT texts to the authority of those who composed them. These are the limitations any formulation of the doctrine of inspiration has to function under if we accept the authority of the apostles and their earliest successors. This is the same problem the early church fathers faced in formulating the doctrine of the Trinity - the evidence before them (the biblical texts and the tradition) imposed limitations they had to accept and reason under. I’m not saying that inspiration was not a complex process, or that God didn’t do different things at different times. I am saying that we have to work within these limitations, and that at least allows us to rule out certain possibilities, including your “dictation style” or “note-taking style” or whatever you want to call it.

The BEST thing about these limitations is that they enable us to read the text in a consistent and faithful manner, because we can test our interpretations against what we know of the various cultures and societies in which they were composed. This notion of separating human and divine intent, on the other hand, throws us into the realms of the arbitrary; start reading the Gnostics and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The only thing you have explained is the ways divine inspiration does not happen. How does divine inspiration take place in the process of these scriptures? Is there a mathematical formula or something?

Not getting into that now. I’ve said enough above.

There has been a perpetual disconnect here which I am not sure how to correct. I don’t question the intents of the authors, nor the inspiration how ever it occurred. I didn’t posit a dictation motif save for my example of note taking which was bad. The point of that wasn’t that I was taking notes, it was that I wrote things I didn’t totally understand.
So in reality we do not differ in the opinion of divine inspiration and writers intent. Where we differ is that I am on the side that says that the writers may not have fully understood what they were writing even if they thought they did. And you are on the side that they wrote what they meant and it only meant what they thought at the time of writing and further interpretation beyond that is impossible.
I humbly disagree. As the work evolved so did it’s meanings.
It really doesn’t matter how the divinity became invited.

Maybe human and divine intents are one, maybe they are not.

LOL if the AUTHORITIES, i.e., the people whose word we take on faith that these texts ARE inspired and who defined inspiration in the first place, are truly authorities, then yes, Pat, they HAVE to be one.

Does it happen only one way and can no one stray from the formula?

Again, we have no evidence that they thought human and divine intents diverged. Nor did they leave us with some sort of rubric to tell when a text could have more than one meaning. Consequently, any attribution of additional divine meaning beyond the human author’s is entirely arbitrary speculation.

Well then, we can only take the text at it’s word alone. Any interpretation beyond that is speculation. It doesn’t matter if that happened in the First, Second temple or by Christian theologians.
We cannot say that one man’s interpretation is right and the other’s is pure speculation. Outside the texts themselves, it’s all speculation, or it’s interpretation, or it’s both. One it’s not purely wrong. I don’t think the argument can be made that any of these observations occur without prejudice.
I also don’t believe a second temple interpretation is more right or less prejudiced than one derived later by theologians who had a complete work to work with. These early interpreters did not have the benefit of the new testament to work with. If they did, and if they believed it, then they may have come to different conclusions than they did.

I sure as hell don’t buy the argument that early Christian theologians were functioning under false premises or paradigms and now we are not and now we got it write and it’s an interpretation without prejudice now, but it was heavily prejudiced then?

Indeed it seems to the prejudice now is to try and prove these early guys wrong. And that is a Protestant coloring of the subject matter. God forbid a Catholic theologian be right!

BTW, what’s with the lol’s all the time? I don’t think I have done anything to deserve that. That’s a headhunter tactic.

[pat]

[quote]Karado wrote:
I’m reading out of curiosity a Catholic Booklet called “Scripture Alone?” By Joel Peters,
WOW, I had no idea…powerful arguments against Sola Scriptura…I can’t refute these arguments!
Son of a bitch…how does one answer an author that makes King Kai look stupid?
Sorry KK.[/quote]

I cannot tell if this is facetious or not??

[Tiribulus]

Tiribulus wrote:Is his majesty or is he not, by this whole line of argumentation, declaring that THE CHURCH is responsible for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity through extrabiblical inspiration if not revelation? Is this not the unavoidable implication? We’ve gotten to know each other quite well my brother. A thing for which I consider myself blessed. If I wanted to attack you, despite your clearly superior technical skills, I still would. I’m not. I’m asking a question.

[quote]KingKai25 wrote: Haha I know it seems like it, >>>[/quote] Yes, … It really does. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< but that’s not actually what I am trying to do. I am actually pushing for the opposite - the realization that the classical Nicaean definition of three co-equal persons sharing a single nature is a contingent attempt to make sense out of the biblical material, >>>[/quote] I’ll hang on to that for now. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< and the success or failure of that formula is NOT beyond evaluation. >>>[/quote] I will at least formally agree with this for now. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< I affirm the rules governing the formula ->>>[/quote]There really isn’t any other logical choice within the confines of the formula. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< recognition of only ONE God; three distinct persons are all called God at various points - [/quote] Indeed. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< but I disagree with the assumption that the formula is itself necessarily accurate or binding. >>>[/quote] And right here is where we begin to bump heads on the very VERY much broader methodological questions. But you knew that. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< the claim of co-equality between Father, Son, and Spirit derived more as a logical inference given the intellectual constraints of the philosophical categories employed than a necessary extrapolation from the biblical data. >>>[/quote] Some version of this was/is by definition necessary. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< In other words, the assertion that the Father, Son, and Spirit are equal in power and authority is a necessary corollary of the philosophical categories used to describe the divine ontology - >>>[/quote] Yes it is. You disagree? [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< unity of God being defined in terms of unity of action and nature - >>>[/quote]I would say unity of nature. Action and ontology are not necessarily synonymous in the context of this discussion. In other words it need not be the case that the persons of the Godhead all function identically for them to be equally divine. Unless by “action” you intended to say “purpose”? [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< and this assertion then dictated the fathers’ exegesis. >>>[/quote] It did. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< My concern here isn’t really for Catholics - they can always appeal to “apostolic tradition” and church authority alongside of Scripture. My concern is for Protestantism, whose greatest strength (in my estimation) is its capacity for theological reform on the basis of Scripture. >>>[/quote] I disagree that this is Protestantism’s greatest strength. Or at least stated this way. Protestantism’s greatest strength is it’s freedom from a spiritually and theologically tyrannical monolithic earthly authority structure that by definition MUST be embraced in practice as if it were God Himself. That is much more than a semantic difference as I am betting you are sentencing this statement to. You and I know were talking about much more than the doctrine of the trinity here. Viewing the potential for change (you call it “reform”) as Protestantism’s greatest strength sets up a mindset wherein it is much easier to broaden the borders of orthodoxy. Or practically abandon the concept of actual orthodoxy altogether. If we’re always reforming after all. You will deny that and say that it’s merely faithfulness to the text in the light of previously unavailable data particularly as it relates to 2nd temple Judaism. We’ll talk about some of this offline, but let me clarify that I don’t believe you set out from the beginning on a quest to either redefine or jettison orthodoxy. Neither do I continue to uphold reformed orthodoxy simply because it’s clean and safe as I KNOW you are thinking. Ain’t ya? =] [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< The Nicaean formulation makes sense as a binding, authoritative formulation within the confines of Catholicism, >>>[/quote] Because they can simply impose the “formula” and that’s the end of the discussion. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< not within Protestantism. I have no problem with a Protestant believing that the Nicaean formula best represents the biblical evidence >>>[/quote] I would say that the Athanasian statement is better, but if I’m understanding what you mean by the “formula”, it proceeds from the same one that Nicaea did. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< (though I would disagree), [/quote] How then, pray tell, do you “affirm” a triune Godhead without it? [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< but I do not think it is legitimate for Protestants to deceive themselves about the “self-evidentiary nature” of the formula >>>[/quote] The formula, which is actually just an individual application of the law of non contradiction, that proposes the following: “If we believe this book to be infallible (we’ll leave inerrant alone for now), and this book everywhere proclaims the existence of only one God and we then find several persons legitimately operating as, being worshiped as, declaring themselves as or being called this God by this God Himself, then we must conclude that this singular divine being has eternally existed as these three persons.” You find this unpersuasive? Or actually not unpersuasive in itself, but proceeding from the wrong launching point by asking the wrong question in the first place? Because the Jews of the second temple period would not have approached the situation this way? I’m askin. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< and to hold that formulation as a standard of orthodoxy. >>>[/quote] I’m gonna leave this part alone for now. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< Yes, Father, Son, and Spirit are all called God, and Scripture portrays them as distinct persons; let us leave our speculations there. [/quote] Because that’s where converted second temple Jews would have left them? They would not have coerced the Greek categories of logic upon this the consummation and fulfillment of their own then 2000 year old Abrahamic religion? This tension didn’t bother them so it shouldn’t bother us? How did we both wind up over here. lol. Nobody’s convincin me that God doesn’t have sense of humor.

[Tiribulus]

[quote]Karado wrote:
Interesting, hey what’s the best Bible to own anyway, is there even a “best” Bible at all?
Prolly not, but The Great Theologian Kirk Cameron is on TV now hawking something called
a “Geneva Bible”, essentially the Bible that made America, I’m kinda familiar with it,
all kinds of insightful footnotes in it, etc.
Is this a good Bible to have? Please tell me quick because ‘Captain Kirk’ sez we may all beam up
at any moment to sidestep the tribulation…Thank you!
[/quote] http://esvstudybible.org/ Not perfect, but a colossal piece of work and practically a one volume study library. You can still feel free to email me. tiribulus @ gmail. Don’t be skeered. I don’t bite. I might be able to help ya out.

I agree Pat. This is a good translation. One of KingKai’s professors was the honcho in charge of the translation committee. I’m not a huge fan of the gender neutralization the NRSV employs, but I’m not condemning the whole thing.

[KingKai25]

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I’m going to go ahead and guess that I won’t be nearly as impressed as you are. “Sola scriptura” is one of the most consistently caricatured and misrepresented protestant doctrines of all. Here’s a tip from someone who has read works from dozens of various religious groups. Most of them can make a case that looks impressive to someone who is not grounded anywhere. That is not an insult Karado. You are simply not in a place to reliably evaluate something like this. If you hate me now I’ll feel bad, but I have feeling I’m not the only one who will think this.

Sola scriptura is not even necessary for a protestant campaign against Catholicism. I take that weapon away from them every time. I don’t believe that anything can be true that is contradicted by the scriptures. That’s not the same as saying that nothing can be true that is not in the scriptures. Which is usually what Catholics mistake “Sola Scriptura” to be advancing. [/quote]

Bingo. I have never once rejected tradition a priori as an inaccurate guide to the beliefs of the apostles; in theory, I am open to the possibility that the traditions we find in the early church fathers do in fact derive from the apostles. In other words, I believe it’s possible for some traditions to shed light on the apostolic teaching.

[KingKai25]

[quote]Legionary wrote:
What do y’all think about the Book of Wisdom? It has always been one of my favorites.[/quote]

Great book with TREMENDOUS value for the study of Second Temple Judaism (and potentially early Christianity). Given that Romans 1 is essentially a dialogue with and attack on some of the book’s central claims, however, I don’t see how someone who recognized Paul’s letters as Scripture could also recognize this book as Scripture.

[chillain]

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
Only makes sense in its original language and coupled with the oral law also given Moses.

In fact, lacking vowels and punctuation in the original Hebrew, the Torah is highly abiguous without the oral law and traditions of interpretation.

The reliance on imperfect interpretations has given rise to many a strange and imperfect theology.[/quote]

Its curious to me that you presume the concept of a ‘perfect theology’

[KingKai25]

[quote]pat wrote:
There has been a perpetual disconnect here which I am not sure how to correct. I don’t question the intents of the authors, nor the inspiration how ever it occurred. I didn’t posit a dictation motif save for my example of note taking which was bad. The point of that wasn’t that I was taking notes, it was that I wrote things I didn’t totally understand.
So in reality we do not differ in the opinion of divine inspiration and writers intent. Where we differ is that I am on the side that says that the writers may not have fully understood what they were writing even if they thought they did. And you are on the side that they wrote what they meant and it only meant what they thought at the time of writing and further interpretation beyond that is impossible.
I humbly disagree. As the work evolved so did it’s meanings.
It really doesn’t matter how the divinity became invited.
[/quote]

THIS recognition on your part is why I’ve been laughing - I completely agree that there has been a seemingly impenetrable wall between us. THAT’S what I’m laughing at; I consistently feel like I’m explaining myself and you don’t understand, while you feel exactly the same way. Serves me right for trying to compose these responses in the breaks between classes (or sometimes during certain classes lol). No disrespect was intended - I hold you and your intellectual capabilities in high regard and would never use HH’s tactics with someone I call a friend. I’m sorry if I offended you, but it was inadvertent.

I think, quite frankly, at least some of our disconnect arises from our different theological traditions. I am pushing for a consistent hermeneutic for Protestants that doesn’t invariably rely on Catholic premises. That’s why I am pulling in all these different points from modern hermeneutical and literary theory, linguistics, etc. You want to be open to the possibility that God says more than what the original authors meant. That is exactly the sort of thing I am pushing against for Protestants, because it has led to myriad problems for us over the last several centuries. We have no magisterium or episcopacy to impose limits on our interpretations; that’s partially why so many Protestants make elaborate assumptions about divine intent so that they can affirm the Trinity as the RCC defines it, the Canon essentially as the RCC defines it, etc. So at the end of the day, you don’t really have much to lose by positing multiple divine intents; we do.

[quote] Pat wrote:

[quote]Kingkai wrote:
Maybe human and divine intents are one, maybe they are not.

LOL if the AUTHORITIES, i.e., the people whose word we take on faith that these texts ARE inspired and who defined inspiration in the first place, are truly authorities, then yes, Pat, they HAVE to be one.

Does it happen only one way and can no one stray from the formula?

Again, we have no evidence that they thought human and divine intents diverged. Nor did they leave us with some sort of rubric to tell when a text could have more than one meaning. Consequently, any attribution of additional divine meaning beyond the human author’s is entirely arbitrary speculation.
[/quote]

Well then, we can only take the text at it’s word alone. Any interpretation beyond that is speculation. It doesn’t matter if that happened in the First, Second temple or by Christian theologians.
We cannot say that one man’s interpretation is right and the other’s is pure speculation. Outside the texts themselves, it’s all speculation, or it’s interpretation, or it’s both. One it’s not purely wrong. I don’t think the argument can be made that any of these observations occur without prejudice.
[/quote]

I seriously don’t know how to respond to these sorts of broad, sweeping statements of yours without saying… well, take some classes on the history of modern (18th-21st century) biblical interpretation and literary theory. I’m not being snarky; I just seriously don’t have time to rehash the entire history of why scholars do what they do, and whether you realize it or not, that’s what a sufficient answer to your statements above requires.

If interpretation were as arbitrary as you seem to think (based on your comments above) the reality is that human communication would actually be impossible. Communication isn’t impossible because context plays a determinative role on interpretation. Context includes not only immediate literary context, but also cultural-social contexts. One cannot fully understand Dickens’ A Christmas Carol without knowing something about the plight of the poor or the widespread disdain for money lenders in early 19th century England. We have to do historical work to understand these time periods and, by extension, these works.

And as with any historical work, there is speculation, but it is informed speculation based on specific, consistent, and observable patterns of human behavior. We are working with probabilities. My point before was that I cannot observe God except through the very texts I am trying to understand in the first place; outside of those texts, I have no idea what God’s purposes or desires or goals might be. Consequently, if I am going to speculate about the divine intent, I have no paradigms to draw from, no claims that I can logically make about “the way Gods work” as I can with human beings. That means that, especially for Protestants, any speculation about divine intention apart from the discernible human intention (which is, once again, a simplistic way of referring to the implied author, a discernible construct of a text) based on historical, cultural, social, and linguistic data is uninformed speculation.

I also don’t believe a second temple interpretation is more right or less prejudiced than one derived later by theologians who had a complete work to work with. These early interpreters did not have the benefit of the new testament to work with. If they did, and if they believed it, then they may have come to different conclusions than they did.

First of all, I’m not sure who you are referring to by “these early interpreters.” Are you talking about the implied audience of the Old Testament texts? And you very question seems to presuppose the clarity of the meanings of the New Testament, a point I contest. You keep missing this point, Pat, and I don’t know how to make it clearer. There is a big step, a huge step that took several centuries for the church to work out, between “God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all called God at different times” to “God is triune being comprised of three distinct but inseparable, co-equal persons sharing a single nature.” The LATTER STATEMENT has become the test for orthodoxy; the former is simply a statement of the problem and is the most you can get out of the New Testament. So I don’t see ANY reason, unless the original OT audience already maintained that latter statement, why “knowledge of the New Testament” would lead them to reject their immediate cultural information for this later stuff. Indeed, I don’t even know how the OT audience would UNDERSTAND the New Testament without reinterpreting it in light of their own culturally-bound experience!

I sure as hell don’t buy the argument that early Christian theologians were functioning under false premises or paradigms and now we are not and now we got it write and it’s an interpretation without prejudice now, but it was heavily prejudiced then?

I never said it was an interpretation without “prejudice,” Pat, or that we are “unprejudiced” now. If you spent some time reading Gadamer, you would realize that “prejudice” (defined positively as revisable pre-judgments, structures or assumptions derived from our culture that enable to us make sense out of data) is what makes knowledge possible at all. My point is that scholarship no longer functions under the assumption of true objectivity’s possibility, whereas the ECFs essentially did. More importantly, we have become more aware of our own situatedness in particular contexts; a cursory reading of the ECFs reveals again and again that they did not recognize historical and cultural distance. In other words, they frequently interpreted the biblical texts without asking if their most basic, culturally-determined assumptions (their prejudices) were shared by those who wrote the biblical texts. So whereas we do our best (given our potential blindspots) to always ask, “does Paul mean the same thing by the word “honor” as I do,” the ECFs rarely asked such questions.

Indeed it seems to the prejudice now is to try and prove these early guys wrong. And that is a Protestant coloring of the subject matter. God forbid a Catholic theologian be right!

I hear the same sort of argument all the time from Protestants about “liberal” scholars who question long-held interpretations. It’s reactionary and insulting. For every Bart Ehrman (who focuses entirely on tearing down the church in all its forms), there are hundreds of other little known scholars who seek simply for truth. Biases against Catholics in particular really aren’t alive in the academy, Pat.

[Karado]

Thanks for the BEST Bible Translations…so there are no better, clearer, no nonsense translations than the ESV and NRSV Versions eh?
How do those versions compare to the “Knox” Bible? Someone said that was one of the best.
I’ll get the ESV and NRSV versions soon I guess, if there are no better ones to choose from.

[Tiribulus]

You can’t go wrong with the ESV. Did you see my post above or are you not talking to me now.

[KingKai25]

[quote] Tiribulus wrote:[quote] Kingkai wrote:
unity of God being defined in terms of unity of action and nature[/quote]I would say unity of nature. Action and ontology are not necessarily synonymous in the context of this discussion. In other words it need not be the case that the persons of the Godhead all function identically for them to be equally divine. Unless by “action” you intended to say “purpose”?[/quote]LOL I honestly tried to form that in the LEAST controversial way I could, but I guess that was a pointless venture. Well, into the mire…
I am alluding to the traditional patristic formula opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt, that is, “the external works of the Trinity are indivisible.” Now we can legitimately say that certain “acts” or aspects of actions are performed by particular members economically speaking, but for the fathers at least, there is no action (broadly conceived) undertaken or completed unilaterally; all members participate in the act of creation, redemption, etc., or else (by this reasoning), none of these actions could fully be ascribed to God. Based on such formula, the aspects that distinguish Father, Son, and Spirit are not economic but generative - the Father as source of Son and Spirit; Son is eternally begotten of the Father; Spirit proceeds from the Father. There would be no action that Father, Son, and Spirit do not undertake and complete together if indeed “God” is acting.
Again, I think this is an unnecessary mire; I’m dealing again with the traditional Trinitarian formulation, and my point is not so much that I find inconsistencies in the formulation as I find the whole purpose of this reasoning fundamentally flawed to begin with.

[quote] Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< My concern here isn’t really for Catholics - they can always appeal to “apostolic tradition” and church authority alongside of Scripture. My concern is for Protestantism, whose greatest strength (in my estimation) is its capacity for theological reform on the basis of Scripture. >>>[/quote]I disagree that this is Protestantism’s greatest strength. Or at least stated this way. Protestantism’s greatest strength is it’s freedom from a spiritually and theologically tyrannical monolithic earthly authority structure that by definition MUST be embraced in practice as if it were God Himself. That is much more than a semantic difference as I am betting you are sentencing this statement to. You and I know were talking about much more than the doctrine of the trinity here. Viewing the potential for change (you call it “reform”) as Protestantism’s greatest strength sets up a mindset wherein it is much easier to broaden the borders of orthodoxy. Or practically abandon the concept of actual orthodoxy altogether. If we’re always reforming after all. You will deny that and say that it’s merely faithfulness to the text in the light of previously unavailable data particularly as it relates to 2nd temple Judaism. We’ll talk about some of this offline, but let me clarify that I don’t believe you set out from the beginning on a quest to either redefine or jettison orthodoxy. Neither do I continue to uphold reformed orthodoxy simply because it’s clean and safe as I KNOW you are thinking. Ain’t ya? =][/quote]I honestly don’t think you are upholding reformed orthodoxy simply because it’s clean and safe (though I do I think you would consider those among its virtues And I recognize your initial distinction as more than semantic, in so far as you want to dethrone one “tyrannical monolithic earthly authority structure” and replace it with an ideological one, a system holding half the distinctive Catholic doctrines as binding without having half the necessary historical substructure or foundation. I have no problem with the idea of orthodoxy, in so far as we understand doctrines as rules that govern our speech and practice (see Lindbeck). I can say that, given the very real biblical witness, anyone who denies the deity of Son is a heretic. Again, the statement, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are called God within Scripture” exerts a regulative function on community speech that defines orthodoxy. But it is a huge leap from that rule to the formulation of “three co-equal persons unified in ousia and action.” And I see no reason why Protestants should take THAT particular formulation as binding rather than the more ambiguous rule established by the biblical text.
I’ll come back to this question of orthodoxy later; for now I’ll just say that I would rather RISK the boundaries being a little less clear than definitively raise arbitrary and illusory ones.[quote] Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< The Nicaean formulation makes sense as a binding, authoritative formulation within the confines of Catholicism, >>>[/quote] Because they can simply impose the “formula” and that’s the end of the discussion. [/quote]Bingo.[quote] Tiribulus wrote:[quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< (though I would disagree), [/quote] How then, pray tell, do you “affirm” a triune Godhead without it?[/quote]Why do you have to? (a response playful yet pregnant)[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< but I do not think it is legitimate for Protestants to deceive themselves about the “self-evidentiary nature” of the formula >>>[/quote] The formula, which is actually just an individual application of the law of non contradiction, that proposes the following: “If we believe this book to be infallible (we’ll leave inerrant alone for now), and this book everywhere proclaims the existence of only one God and we then find several persons legitimately operating as, being worshiped as, declaring themselves as or being called this God by this God Himself, then we must conclude that this singular divine being has eternally existed as these three persons.” You find this unpersuasive? Or actually not unpersuasive in itself, but proceeding from the wrong launching point by asking the wrong question in the first place? Because the Jews of the second temple period would not have approached the situation this way? I’m askin. [/quote]This is THE central issue, right here. You phrased it well. It raises several questions for me, none of which I can get into right now.

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< and to hold that formulation as a standard of orthodoxy. >>>[/quote] I’m gonna leave this part alone for now. [quote]KingKai25 wrote:<<< Yes, Father, Son, and Spirit are all called God, and Scripture portrays them as distinct persons; let us leave our speculations there. [/quote] Because that’s where converted second temple Jews would have left them? They would not have coerced the Greek categories of logic upon this the consummation and fulfillment of their own then 2000 year old Abrahamic religion? This tension didn’t bother them so it shouldn’t bother us? How did we both wind up over here. lol. Nobody’s convincin me that God doesn’t have sense of humor.[/quote]Haha you’re literally hitting the nail on the head, but I don’t have much time! Again, Pat threw out a bunch of theories, but the question remains - if this issue didn’t bother the apostles, the ones applying the language of deity to Jesus, we need to know WHY. They were JEWS. SECOND TEMPLE JEWS. Our Trinitarian doctrine would have required a complete overhaul of Jewish monotheism; it CERTAINLY pushed Jews away in the second and third centuries, so why do we find so many converts willing to embrace the deity of Jesus in the first century? Why didn’t the apostles search the Scriptures to demonstrate such things when they did so with every OTHER doctrine? Is it possible that they DID have categories that enabled them to think of Jesus as God without necessarily requiring our invocation of the trinitarian formula? I would argue YES.