Is the Earth Flat?

[d taylor]

That is in fact what you are doing.

What you are doing is taking John chapter 6 and taking it into the last supper. But it is plainly stated in verses about the last supper by Jesus that the last supper is an act of remembrance not an act to receive God's free gift of Eternal Life.

 

[JacksBratt]

So you believe that if we don't eat bread and wine we literally have no life in us? You truly believe that is what Christ was saying?
God speaks in Genesis and it is reality.
God speaks at the last supper and it is not reality?
Make up your mind, which is it?

If you cannot decipher between "I am the door" "I am the Lamb" "your body is the temple".. and such obvious metaphors.... and.... In the beginning God.... and all the miraculous actual events of Genesis.. I cannot help you.

Jesus is not a door.. and He is not a small sheep... Your body is not a real temple.. But.. there is real light.. real water... real cattle.. real trees... a real moon, sun and stars..

God was perfectly capable of doing what He said that He did.. In the time frame that He states that He did it....

There is no metaphor.

 

[prodromos]

What you are doing is taking John chapter 6 and taking it into the last supper. But it is plainly stated in verses about the last supper by Jesus that the last supper is an act of remembrance not an act to receive God's free gift of Eternal Life.

The word "αναμνησιν" which has been translated as "remembrance" has a much deeper meaning of "make present", and it has always been understood in the Church that Christ's flesh and blood are physically made present in the celebration of the Lord's supper. The only ones who believed otherwise were the gnostic heretics.
The Jews have a figurative meaning of the expression "to eat someone's flesh" and that means to utterly destroy them, so if you insist on "eating Christ's flesh" being figurative then you require us to believe the Jesus commands us to destroy him. You are exactly like the disciples who found his words too hard and stopped following Him at that point, except that you pretend He didn't actually mean what He said.

Anyway, you've proved my point. You insist on the Genesis account being literal but are completely inconsistent in how you interpret parts of the New Testament, insisting that they must not be literal.

 

[prodromos]

If you cannot decipher between "I am the door" "I am the Lamb" "your body is the temple".. and such obvious metaphors.... and.... In the beginning God.... and all the miraculous actual events of Genesis.. I cannot help you

If you cannot understand the difference between Jesus describing an abstract concept ("I am the door") and a physical reality ("this is my body") I can't help you either. Jesus never held a door or a lamb or any other object and said "I am this door", or "this lamb is Me" or "I am that rock over there. No, not that one, the other one".
Back in John 6, Jesus lost some of His disciples because they could not comprehend doing what He said they needed to do. Up until then they were willing to trust Him but after that they must have thought Him to be insane. It wasn't until the last supper that Jesus gave them the means to do what He had said they needed to do without it being repugnant. Jesus took the bread, broke it and just as if He had said "Let there be light", said "This is My body". Likewise He took the cup and said, "This is my blood". He didn't say " This bread represents my body" or " This wine represents my blood"

 

[The Liturgist]

The metaphor of the "body" and "Blood" is evident in the fact that Christ was, at that very moment, holding actual bread and actual wine and stating.... "This is my body" and "this is my blood"... It was a metaphor at the very first communion.

No, because of John 6 and 1 Corinthians 10-12, and also St. Peter informing us that we become partakers of the Divine Nature.

To take it any further and claim that it was His actual blood and body.. would be laughable at the very moment it happened.. let alone now.

Firstly, while, like Martin Luther, I disagree with Eucharistic theologies that deny the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and I strongly disagree with Eucharistic theologies that deny even the spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist, that is to say, that the bread and wine become spiritually the Body and Blood of our Lord, as John Calvin asserted, because as I see it, a theology which disagrees not only with the Early Church and its direct descendants, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East, as well as the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists and the vast majority of Anglicans is obviously problematic, I have never once characterized the Eucharistic theologies (which are generally either Memorialist or Zwinglian) expressed by another member of ChristianForums as laughable. Not once.

In Genesis.. it is a literal description of God (the preincarnate Jesus) literally speaking all things into existance. As is the rest of the book on creation.

Why should we literally interpret Genesis and not John?

 

[d taylor]

The word "αναμνησιν" which has been translated as "remembrance" has a much deeper meaning of "make present", and it has always been understood in the Church that Christ's flesh and blood are physically made present in the celebration of the Lord's supper. The only ones who believed otherwise were the gnostic heretics.
The Jews have a figurative meaning of the expression "to eat someone's flesh" and that means to utterly destroy them, so if you insist on "eating Christ's flesh" being figurative then you require us to believe the Jesus commands us to destroy him. You are exactly like the disciples who found his words too hard and stopped following Him at that point, except that you pretend He didn't actually mean what He said.

Anyway, you've proved my point. You insist on the Genesis account being literal but are completely inconsistent in how you interpret parts of the New Testament, insisting that they must not be literal.

Too bad the understanding of scripture, has escaped you. You have let your churches bad theology blind you to much in the scriptures.
I love how these special theologies always come up with these deeper meanings of special words to bolster up their theology. Kind of like the names they have created for their antagonist in areas they disagree.
anamnésis: remembrance
Original Word: ἀνάμνησις, εως, ἡ
Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine
Transliteration: anamnésis
Phonetic Spelling: (an-am'-nay-sis)
Definition: remembrance
Usage: a recalling, remembrance, memory.

If you want to turn the word remembrance into meaning receiving eternal life, go ahead and make that unnecessary jump.
I can just easily take Eternal Life and how to receive God's free as it is used in The Bible, without having to alter meaning.

By your theology David and others from The Tanakh who did not partake of the last supper are dead and in hell.

Like i have said before i eagerly await the reveling of the truth of The Bible.

 

[The Liturgist]

Too bad the understanding of scripture, has escaped you. You have let your churches bad theology blind you to much in the scriptures.
I love how these special theologies always come up with these deeper meanings of special words to bolster up their theology. Kind of like the names they have created for their antagonist in areas they disagree.
anamnésis: remembrance
Original Word: ἀνάμνησις, εως, ἡ
Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine
Transliteration: anamnésis
Phonetic Spelling: (an-am'-nay-sis)
Definition: remembrance
Usage: a recalling, remembrance, memory.

If you want to turn the word remembrance into meaning receiving eternal life, go ahead and make that unnecessary jump.
I can just easily take Eternal Life and how to receive God's free as it is used in The Bible, without having to alter meaning.

Unlike some people, @prodromos does just randomly assert things without evidence. In the case of Anamnesis, the definition he provides is very widely known. To quote The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Bible and Theology,

This Greek word is practically untranslatable in English. “Memorial,” “commemoration,” “remembrance” all suggest a recollection of the past, whereas anamnesis means making present an object or person from the past. Sometimes the term “reactualization” has been used to indicate the force of anamnesis.

By your theology David and others from The Tanakh who did not partake of the last supper are dead and in hell.

As someone who is intimately familiar with Eastern Orthodox theology I can assure you that King David and the other holy prophets, judges, patriarchs and pious God-believing saints we find in the Old Testament are not believed to be either dead or in Hell, but rather, in some cases are alive in Heaven bodily, for example, Elijah and Moses.

But any rate, we seem to be missing the point: the religious opinions of @prodromos are all sustainable in light of science and reality. None of them can be categorized as demonstrably false. On the other hand, a belief in a flat Earth is obviously and immediately erroneous and directly contradicts the experiential knowledge of most people.

 

[JacksBratt]

I like how "Is the Earth Flat?" translates into "this is my body" means... XXXXX.

 

[John Caldwell]

Do you believe the Earth is flat? If so, to what degree do you believe the Earth is flat?

Yes, the Earth is flat. I know because I almost fell off it once. I was at a Grateful Dead concert and....

 

[d taylor]

Unlike some people, @prodromos does just randomly assert things without evidence. In the case of Anamnesis, the definition he provides is very widely known. To quote The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Bible and Theology,

This Greek word is practically untranslatable in English. “Memorial,” “commemoration,” “remembrance” all suggest a recollection of the past, whereas anamnesis means making present an object or person from the past. Sometimes the term “reactualization” has been used to indicate the force of anamnesis.



As someone who is intimately familiar with Eastern Orthodox theology I can assure you that King David and the other holy prophets, judges, patriarchs and pious God-believing saints we find in the Old Testament are not believed to be either dead or in Hell, but rather, in some cases are alive in Heaven bodily, for example, Elijah and Moses.

But any rate, we seem to be missing the point: the religious opinions of @prodromos are all sustainable in light of science and reality. None of them can be categorized as demonstrably false. On the other hand, a belief in a flat Earth is obviously and immediately erroneous and directly contradicts the experiential knowledge of most people.

Really i am not missing the point. I am stating that The Bible is 100% truthful, accurate in areas that describe,speak about God's creation heaven and earth.

That from The Bible there is no reason to believe that God is not speaking or communicating to humanity a literal description of His creation in Genesis 1 or other areas in The Bible.

 

[The Liturgist]

Really i am not missing the point. I am stating that The Bible is 100% truthful, accurate in areas that describe,speak about God's creation heaven and earth.

That from The Bible there is no reason to believe that God is not speaking or communicating to humanity a literal description of His creation in Genesis 1 or other areas in The Bible.

There is a pretty good reason, namely that the Earth is not flat and nothing in Genesis 1 requires it to be flat.

 

[John Caldwell]

Maybe the Earth started out as flat, but when God rested His feet on her she rounded out because of the weight.

Just taking a "literal position" about God describing the Earth as His footstool.

 

[d taylor]

There is a pretty good reason, namely that the Earth is not flat and nothing in Genesis 1 requires it to be flat.

Sure it does a dome does not cover a ball a dome fits/works over a flat surface

 

[d taylor]

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Came across this video which was posted on another thread, started yesterday (Oct 2nd 2022). It is a video from 2018, so it is not new and people may have already seen this video but just posting any way.

The maker or speaker in the video is not a flat earther but he presents his opinion that the early people were.

 

[JacksBratt]

Maybe the Earth started out as flat, but when God rested His feet on her she rounded out because of the weight.

Just taking a "literal position" about God describing the Earth as His footstool.

This may be the image that people should get from "The earth is my footstool" don't you think?

 

[d taylor]

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After pondering the raqia in Genesis 1 for a while. I now believe that the raqia is as stated in The Bible a solid crystal clear area that God created, that is holding back the waters above.

But i believe this raqia is so clear that it is indistinguishable from the air above us. It is the location of the sun, moon and stars that move in this solid clear area.

 

[Shrewd Manager]

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Came across this video which was posted on another thread, started yesterday (Oct 2nd 2022). It is a video from 2018, so it is not new and people may have already seen this video but just posting any way.

The maker or speaker in the video is not a flat earther but he presents his opinion that the early people were.

That's a good study imho, which brings in various ancient near eastern sources to posit that they all endorsed the plane shape of the earth. The Greeks first proposed the theory that the earth was a ball, mainly due to the apparent rise and fall of objects (sun, boats etc) 'over' the horizon. But this is only apparent, not real. Zoom lenses are perhaps the simplest way of debunking this. Convergent lines of perspective and resolving power explain the phenomenon. Just an optical illusion, same as the apparent convergence of train tracks at the horizon. It's a 'depth perception hack', if you like.

The thing is, there are many experiments that anyone can do for themselves to test the hypothesis of curvature on an earth said to be 40,000km in circumference. But every time it's a null result.

Looking at babies who can't let go of their blankies or teddy bears, it's all too much for their limited sense of security. Well, the foundations of the earth are immovable pillars, and that's just an earthly part of the rock solid eternal security that God gives us.

 

[prodromos]

The thing is, there are many experiments that anyone can do for themselves to test the hypothesis of curvature on an earth said to be 40,000km in circumference. But every time it's a null result.

Viewing the horizon on the coast with a water level from different altitudes proves the curvature of the earth. Your claim of a "null result" is trivially false.

 

[Shrewd Manager]

Viewing the horizon on the coast with a water level from different altitudes proves the curvature of the earth.

How so?

 

[prodromos]

How so?

If the earth was flat, the horizon would rise to eye level no matter what altitude you view from.
Using a water level to determine eye level, the horizon is increasingly below eye level the higher the altitude you view from, consistent with the earth being a sphere.

Absolute proof.. can't deny.. the earth is flat
Absolute proof.. can't deny.. the earth is flat