Do you affirm the fundamentals?

[OzSpen]

There is Godly type Love and all the other types of love. Godly type Love has no "logic" to it since you get nothing back from Loving others this way and really you get only more sacrificing of self if that is what you want. Why does the "secular person" love you and others (what are they looking for in return "a better world" as an example?)

bling,

That's not what Jesus taught. There is something one gets back from loving others, especially loving one's enemies:

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked (Luke 6:35 NIV, emphasis added).​

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

In the beginning when God was already creating ...

From where did you get that exegesis?

 

[Philip_B]

From where did you get that exegesis?

Old OT Lecturer many years ago

 

[OzSpen]

The definition of that article is "Propitiation is a two-part act that involves appeasing the wrath of an offended person and being reconciled to him."

I have no problem with that. God is infinitely offended by our sins, and we cannot offer an infinite remedy. Jesus, being sinless, more so being God Himself, can offer an infinite remedy.

What that article did not go into was the nuts and bolts of the interaction between the Father and the Son in the propitiation. It was all about how WE need propitiation, that the Son does it, but not how. Did the Father hate the Son? Was the Son damned? The article does not go into those questions which are central to my qualification that I cannot accept penal substitution but can accept vicarious atonement. Those are passed over in silence.

By penal substitution I mean that Jesus received the hatred for sins that the Father rightfully has for such infinite transgression as defying the Holy God. That Jesus was damned in our place. I just don't buy that. Jesus did pay a price for us, a steep price, but not that of being hated by the Father, of being damned in our place. That was Chris' position, that temporarily Jesus the eternal Son of the Father was hated by His Father and actually damned for a short time.

Jesus paid our debts. His payment substitutes for ours, which we cannot make because we cannot pay the infinite price needed to satisfy our own debts. But Jesus did not pay in kind, one deserved damnation paid off by another damnation. Jesus was the obedient Son of the Father, love expressed in obedience, and love reciprocated, which paid our debts according to Romans 5: 18-19.

chevy,

Do you have a problem with the wrath of God as taught in NT Christianity? We see that wrath in action in Acts 5:1-11 (NET):

5:1 Now a man named Ananias, together with Sapphira his wife, sold a piece of property. 2 He kept back for himself part of the proceeds with his wife’s knowledge; he brought only part of it and placed it at the apostles’ feet. 3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back for yourself part of the proceeds from the sale of the land? 4 Before it was sold, did it not belong to you? And when it was sold, was the money not at your disposal? How have you thought up this deed in your heart? You have not lied to people but to God!” 5 When Ananias heard these words he collapsed and died, and great fear gripped all who heard about it. 6 So the young men came, wrapped him up, carried him out, and buried him. 7 After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, but she did not know what had happened. 8 Peter said to her, “Tell me, were the two of you paid this amount for the land?” Sapphira said, “Yes, that much.” 9 Peter then told her, “Why have you agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out!” 10 At once she collapsed at his feet and died. So when the young men came in, they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11 Great fear gripped the whole church and all who heard about these things.​

How can the sin issue of human beings be appeased before God so that human beings can be reconciled with God? That's where propitiation provides the biblical solution, in my understanding.

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

Old OT Lecturer many years ago

That's hardly providing us with exegesis of 'in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' as meaning, 'In the beginning when God was already creating' (your language).

You seem to be promoting a view promoted by Ellen van Wolde of the Netherlands:

Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew.

She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world -- and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.

Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.

She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".

The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"(God is not the Creator, claims academic).​

Dr Dominic Statham has assessed this van Wolde theory:

Prof Ellen van Wolde is, I believe, fundamentally in error, and her final statement, “The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now”, I think, is a heresy. The Christian church has always considered the belief that God created everything from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) to be one of the pillars of the faith, as did orthodox Jews at the time of Christ. According to the apostle Paul, “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20) and the Bible is clear that God should be worshipped because he created all things (Revelation 4:11).

Prof. van Wolde’s error is easily exposed, and one doesn’t need to be a Hebrew scholar to see this.

[Ed. Note: one would also wonder why no Jewish or Christian scholar saw this meaning before her. E.g. the Jewish Christian scholars Keil and Delitzsch, in their detailed commentary, say:

The verb בּרא, indeed, to judge from its use in Joshua 17:15, Joshua 17:18, where it occurs in the Piel (to hew out), means literally “to cut, or hew”, but in Kal [as in Genesis 1:1], it always means to create, and is only applied to a divine creation, the production of that which had no existence before. It is never joined with an accusative of the material, although it does not exclude a pre-existent material unconditionally, but is used for the creation of man (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 5:1-2), and of everything new that God creates, whether in the kingdom of nature (Numbers 16:30) or of that of grace (Exodus 34:10; Psalm 51:10, etc.). In this verse, however, the existence of any primeval material is precluded by the object created: "the heaven and the earth." This expression is frequently employed to denote the world, or universe, for which there was no single word in the Hebrew language; the universe consisting of a twofold whole, and the distinction between heaven and earth being essentially connected with the notion of the world, the fundamental condition of its historical development (vid., Genesis 14:19, Genesis 14:22; Exodus 31:17).] (source)​

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

As a child I was taught right from wrong that would be a good starting point.

How do you know what you were taught was actually correct or wrong? By what standard?

 

[Radagast]

Why are we talking about evolution at all? The "fundamentals," as originally formulated, did not include 1440-hour creation.

 

[gordonhooker]

Why are we talking about evolution at all? The "fundamentals," as originally formulated, did not include 1440-hour creation.

Some of us are trying not to.

 

[chevyontheriver]

chevy,

Do you have a problem with the wrath of God as taught in NT Christianity? We see that wrath in action in Acts 5:1-11 (NET):

5:1 Now a man named Ananias, together with Sapphira his wife, sold a piece of property. 2 He kept back for himself part of the proceeds with his wife’s knowledge; he brought only part of it and placed it at the apostles’ feet. 3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back for yourself part of the proceeds from the sale of the land? 4 Before it was sold, did it not belong to you? And when it was sold, was the money not at your disposal? How have you thought up this deed in your heart? You have not lied to people but to God!” 5 When Ananias heard these words he collapsed and died, and great fear gripped all who heard about it. 6 So the young men came, wrapped him up, carried him out, and buried him. 7 After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, but she did not know what had happened. 8 Peter said to her, “Tell me, were the two of you paid this amount for the land?” Sapphira said, “Yes, that much.” 9 Peter then told her, “Why have you agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out!” 10 At once she collapsed at his feet and died. So when the young men came in, they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11 Great fear gripped the whole church and all who heard about these things.​

How can the sin issue of human beings be appeased before God so that human beings can be reconciled with God? That's where propitiation provides the biblical solution, in my understanding.

I think you are misunderstanding me. My SOLE point here is that our redemption is not based on God shifting His righteous wrath from you and me onto Jesus in a sort of swap. As if the Father loved His Son and then hated His Son who took on our sins and damned His Son for a while as a reprobate sinner. I'm just fine with propitiation unless by propitiation you mean that.

 

[BobRyan]

I think you are misunderstanding me. My SOLE point here is that our redemption is not based on God shifting His righteous wrath from you and me onto Jesus in a sort of swap. As if the Father loved His Son and then hated His Son who took on our sins and damned His Son for a while as a reprobate sinner. I'm just fine with propitiation unless by propitiation you mean that.

NIV translates it as "Atoning Sacrifice" in Romans 3 and 1 John 2:2 which is a much more Bible-consistent term in context with "Atonment" than the Greek pagan come form that would be "Christ as so tortured that finally the angry deity relented of the doom he had planned".

Rather in the Bible "God was in CHRIST reconciling the World to Himself on the cross" 2 Cor 5
In the Bible "God so loved that HE gave" John 3:16

 

[bling]

bling,

That's not what Jesus taught. There is something one gets back from loving others, especially loving one's enemies:

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked (Luke 6:35 NIV, emphasis added).​

Oz

This is getting way off topic and the topic of Love (Godly type Love) is huge with Books written on it.

When I said “you do it expecting to get nothing back and not needing to get anything back”, I was referring to the person or people you were Loving on, but we can talk further:

When you truly sacrificially, unconditionally and unselfishly Love your enemy is that you doing it or is it the Spirit within you that you allow to do it? Does this Love go way beyond your personal abilities?

What “more” (rewarded greater) do you think you get by Loving your enemy?

Loving your enemies is the minimum and maximum you are to do and it is expected of a Christ like person, so what “gain” are you getting and are you doing more than what is expected of the Spirit within you?

Since you are a child of God before you may be called upon to Love your enemies do you not already have:

“your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High”?

When I became a Christian, I was showered with unbelievable wonderful gifts and the only gift that grows is Godly type Love with use, so is Luke just emphasizing what we already have?

Do we respond to get more or do we respond because of what we already have?

 

[BobRyan]

One leading Hebrew scholar is James Barr, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University and former Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England. Although he does not believe in the historicity of Genesis 1, Dr. Barr does agree that the writer's intent was to narrate the actual history of primeval creation. Others also agree with him.

"Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know. "

===========================

So while the atheist would not accept the Bible account in Genesis - he/she at least is free to admit the genre - the "kind of writing that it is".

James Barr is welcome to his opinion. I disagree with him, .

You are welcomed to your opinion - but at the moment I would not have any reason to "quote you" when talking to someone else - about the point of what Hebrew and OT scholars at world class universities are claiming when it comes to the "genre" of Genesis 1-11.

 

[Philip_B]

That's hardly providing us with exegesis of 'in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' as meaning, 'In the beginning when God was already creating' (your language).

You seem to be promoting a view promoted by Ellen van Wolde of the Netherlands:

Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew.

She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world -- and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.

Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.

She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".

The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"(God is not the Creator, claims academic).​

Dr Dominic Statham has assessed this van Wolde theory:

Prof Ellen van Wolde is, I believe, fundamentally in error, and her final statement, “The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now”, I think, is a heresy. The Christian church has always considered the belief that God created everything from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) to be one of the pillars of the faith, as did orthodox Jews at the time of Christ. According to the apostle Paul, “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20) and the Bible is clear that God should be worshipped because he created all things (Revelation 4:11).

Prof. van Wolde’s error is easily exposed, and one doesn’t need to be a Hebrew scholar to see this.

[Ed. Note: one would also wonder why no Jewish or Christian scholar saw this meaning before her. E.g. the Jewish Christian scholars Keil and Delitzsch, in their detailed commentary, say:

The verb בּרא, indeed, to judge from its use in Joshua 17:15, Joshua 17:18, where it occurs in the Piel (to hew out), means literally “to cut, or hew”, but in Kal [as in Genesis 1:1], it always means to create, and is only applied to a divine creation, the production of that which had no existence before. It is never joined with an accusative of the material, although it does not exclude a pre-existent material unconditionally, but is used for the creation of man (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 5:1-2), and of everything new that God creates, whether in the kingdom of nature (Numbers 16:30) or of that of grace (Exodus 34:10; Psalm 51:10, etc.). In this verse, however, the existence of any primeval material is precluded by the object created: "the heaven and the earth." This expression is frequently employed to denote the world, or universe, for which there was no single word in the Hebrew language; the universe consisting of a twofold whole, and the distinction between heaven and earth being essentially connected with the notion of the world, the fundamental condition of its historical development (vid., Genesis 14:19, Genesis 14:22; Exodus 31:17).] (source)​

Oz

As it so happens I don't believe those were the views I was expressing. Rather more simply a belief that God is creator. God is eternal, and it is not as if one day he decided to be a creator, for God is the eternal creator. I probably share more sympathy with Moltmann who argued that God was not a retired creator, which would suggest that creation (and creating) is living and active. My understanding is Hebrew tense is rather more ambiguous than English tense (and I claim zero expertise in Hebrew), however philosophically it makes sense, to me at least. Perhaps one of the problems we have in this area is to discover what beginning means, for our forebears saw that time time had a beginning and an end, whereas the modern mind assumes that time is a continuum from this point infinitely backwards and forwards, so for us the idea of the beginning of time and the end of time are problematical and perhaps thought of as allegorical.

I recall long discussions about creation ex-nihilo and all sorts of seemingly very clever points being made about this. For me it seems a painful waste of time for whatever God created the heavens and the earth from, was something that God had already created. So hence my understanding of the opening of Genesis that at whatever point it is that we choose to call the beginning, there is before that that which is before the beginning and however far back you can go in chasing a beginning there is God who is already creating.

 

[Catherineanne]

Catherine,

Please do exegesis of the term Paul used in 2 Tim 3:16 for 'useful', ὠφέλιμος (ōphelimos), which Arndt & Gingrich's Greek lexicon states as meaning 'useful, beneficial, advantageous ... for someone or something' (Arndt & Gingrich 1957:909).

Any day of the week I'll use a GPS in my motor vehicle that is useful, beneficial and advantageous to get me from Brisbane to Bedourie in western Queensland, Australia.

That GPS has all the qualities of being advantageous in my travel plans and getting me the directions to where I want to go. The GPS has the advantageous Google qualities to give directions to places I would have to inconvenience myself to find.

The Scripture is a great advantage in my life; it puts me streets ahead of trying to do it on my own or following the world's way of knowing where to go in life and after-life.

I'll accept the God-breathed Scripture any day of the week to be useful, beneficial and advantageous for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training me in righteousness. I get the advantage of these qualities coming from God Himself - through Scripture.

For the Christian life, it is more than the 'Nobel Prize for Literature'. Paul's words and grammar don't need any worldly accolades. He assures us that the God-given Scripture is disciplining us for life with a capital L while on this earth and preparing us for the life to come.

'Well done good and faithful servant' (Matt 25:23) will be from the advantageous training I've received by putting Scripture into action. I'm more interested in that 'acclaim' than the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Oz

Nice sermon. Totally wasted on me.

Here is the point again, in the most simple terms, because you are clearly having a problem understanding.

Useful =/= perfect

 

[Catherineanne]

Catherine,

You don't need to see the words 'perfect' or 'inerrant' in 2 Tim 3:16 (NIV) to know that 'all Scripture' in the original documents refers to the inerrant Scriptures. 'God-breathed' covers that.

When Scripture comes from the perfect God (Deut 32:4; Matt 5:48) who does not tell lies (Num 23:19; Heb 6:17-18) and tells the truth (Ps 31:5; Rom 3:4), that is I can affirm that the Bible is inerrant in the autographa.

That's the nature of God, the perfect, truthful God who does not lie. Therefore, the Scripture he provides to human beings is perfect, truthful and without lying, i.e. inerrant in the original documents.

I don't have to see the words 'Trinity' or 'Bible' in the Bible to know that the teachings are true. Therefore, I don't need to see the word 'inerrant' in the Bible to know that 'all Scripture' is inerrant in the autographa.

Oz

Sola Scriptura would beg to differ.

Irony is a wonderful thing.

 

[gordonhooker]

Then place me on ignore.

I am hopeful that one day you may have something to say that I agree with.

 

[BobRyan]

One leading Hebrew scholar is James Barr, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University and former Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England. Although he does not believe in the historicity of Genesis 1, Dr. Barr does agree that the writer's intent was to narrate the actual history of primeval creation. Others also agree with him.

"Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know. "

===========================

So while the atheist would not accept the Bible account in Genesis - he/she at least is free to admit the genre - the "kind of writing that it is".

James Barr is welcome to his opinion. I disagree with him, .

You are welcomed to your opinion - but at the moment I would not have any reason to "quote you" when talking to someone else - about the point of what Hebrew and OT scholars at world class universities are claiming when it comes to the "genre" of Genesis 1-11.

My understanding is Hebrew tense is rather more ambiguous than English tense (and I claim zero expertise in Hebrew), however philosophically it makes sense, to me at least. .

Ex 20:11
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Ambiguity seems to be missing there.

Genesis 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

Ambiguity is not the theme of those statements "as written" we would need to 'insert it'

 

[BobRyan]

How can the sin issue of human beings be appeased before God so that human beings can be reconciled with God?

God's solution was "to have God tortured". Who do you suppose "gets paid" with each act of torture applied to God??

 

[Open Heart]

But I would expect you to endorse at least:

2. That Jesus Christ is God.
3. That Jesus was born to a virgin.
5. That Jesus literally died, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and will return to earth.

And the original "fundamentalists" were a little different from some modern ones.

YES!

 

[OzSpen]

This is getting way off topic and the topic of Love (Godly type Love) is huge with Books written on it.

When I said “you do it expecting to get nothing back and not needing to get anything back”, I was referring to the person or people you were Loving on, but we can talk further:

When you truly sacrificially, unconditionally and unselfishly Love your enemy is that you doing it or is it the Spirit within you that you allow to do it? Does this Love go way beyond your personal abilities?

What “more” (rewarded greater) do you think you get by Loving your enemy?

Loving your enemies is the minimum and maximum you are to do and it is expected of a Christ like person, so what “gain” are you getting and are you doing more than what is expected of the Spirit within you?

Since you are a child of God before you may be called upon to Love your enemies do you not already have:

“your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High”?

When I became a Christian, I was showered with unbelievable wonderful gifts and the only gift that grows is Godly type Love with use, so is Luke just emphasizing what we already have?

Do we respond to get more or do we respond because of what we already have?

This is not responding to the content of the OP.