Deadworm

Some evangelicals in my small city have been flocking to our local Catholic church and finding God real there.

Nope! What you 2 don't get is this: All gender language about God is necessarily metaphorical. God's ways and thoughts are above our ways and thoughts and God reveals Godself to Moses by the evasive phrase, "Tell them I will be whatever I will be has sent you." I hate to break this to you, but God is not a wise bearded male sitting on a throne! That is poetic imagery to symbolize God's authority. The real question is this: what negative impact does a disproportionate emphasis on a tribal patriarchal God have upon women. As I shall demonstrate in my next planned posts, it has a devastating impact! And you guys seem to have overlooked the fact that Hosea 11:9 specifically denies that God is a "male" (Hebrew: "ish")!

This thread will focus on biblical archaeological sites and artifacts which may well be very relevant to our faith or are otherwise just plain fascinating. (1) Jesus' House at Nazareth? Check out this online article "Jesus' House? 1st Century Structure May Be Where He Grew." A visitor to Nazareth in 670 AD reported a long-standing tradition that a house he visited had been the house of Joseph and Mary. Most scholars dismissed this tradition as legend, until archaeologist recently established that it was occupied precisely at the time when Joseph and Mary lived. Among the artifacts found there was a piece of spinning equipment, which interests me because ancient rabbis referred to Jesus' mother as Mary the spinner. A wall covers a large empty space that may have been a room in the house. So far, this space has not been penetrated out of fear of damaging the wall. An Israeli archaeologist asked a friend of mine if he would serve as an advisor on how to safely penetrate this room. As a dig volunteer, my friend (a former member of my Bible study) had discovered a hidden cave structure at Bethsaida, where as many as 5 of Jesus' disciples may have once lived. But my friend had had enough of biblical archaeology; so he declined.

Lady Kay, I have a suggestion for you to try before making your final decision to abandon this site. Start a new thread that expresses your burning questions which have not been answered here to your satisfaction. Then in your OP make clear t he type of answers you don't want and ask for new insights for your reflection.

Mainline denominations tend to be much better informed about this issue than evangelicals. God says, “I am God and not a man” (Hosea 11:9)., and so, “God is not a male (Hebrew: “ish;”--Num. 13:19). So all male imagery of God in Scripture is patriarchal language not to be taken literally. Here are just some of the neglected feminine imagery of God in Scripture: God is often compared to a mother: “For Zion was saying, “Yahweh has abandoned me, the Lord has forgotten me.” Does a woman forget the baby at her breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you (Isaiah 49:14-15).” “For thus says Yahweh...Like a son comforted by his mother, so will I comfort you (Isaiah 66:12-13).” “O Yahweh,... I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child on its mother's lap (Psalm 131:1-2).” God is often feminized by breast, womb, and birth pangs imagery: “You were unmindful of the Rock who bore you and you forgot the God who writhed with labor pains with you (Deuteronomy 32:18).” ”But now I [Yahweh] cry out as a woman in labor, gasping and panting (Isaiah 42:14).” “Listen to me...all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from the belly (Hebrew: “beten”), carried from the womb (Hebrew: “rechem”)....I will bare, carry, and save (Isaiah 46:3-4).” Moses: “Was it I who conceived all this people, was it I who gave them birth, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, like a beloved little mother with a baby at the breast (Numbers 11:12).” “Is Ephraim my son? My darling child? ...My womb trembles for him. I will truly show motherly compassion upon him (Jeremiah 30:20). Other female roles are compared to God: e. g. “Like the eyes of a slave-girl fixed on the eyes of her mistress, so our eyes are fixed on Yahweh our God (Psalm 123:2).” God is feminized as Lady Wisdom as if Wisdom were a distinct Person from God: Theophilus, bishop of Antioch (180 AD), presents the first Christian use of the term “Trinity” (“trias”) and presents a Trinity of “God, God's Word [Christ], and God's Wisdom (“sophia”--feminine, not “the holy Spirit!”).” The church of Antioch infers this Trinity from the frequent feminine personification of God as as Lady Wisdom (Hebrew: “Hokmah”) in the OT: e.g. “Wisdom calls aloud in the streets, She raises her voice in the public squares, She calls out at the street corners, She delivers her message at he city gates (Proverbs 1:20ff.).” “I was by His [God's] side, a beloved little mother, delighting with Him day after day (Proverbs 8:30—a literal translation of the Hebrew).” Despite Jesus' references to God as “Abba-Father,” He uses feminine images of God in His sexually parallel parables. For example, Jesus likens the kingdom of God first to a man sowing mustard seed and then to a woman mixing leaven with flour (Luke 13:18-21) and to a male shepherd searching for a lost sheep and then to a woman looking for a lost coin (Luke 15:4-10). Thus, a woman symbolizes God in 2 of these sexually parallel parables. In my next planned post, I will explain what is at stake in recognizing biblical patriarchy and predominantly male imagery for God. What do you think?

So you are claiming that vegetation can survive without the heat of the sun?

Here are just 7 of the absurd implications of a literal understanding of Genesis 1-3 that cry out for a poetic nonliteral interpretation. (1) Earth's vegetation is created the day before the sun is created (Genesis1:11-19). (2) Water substitutes for the vacuum of outer space. So a “dome” is needed to separate the waters above from the waters below (1:6). (3) Adam and Eve are able to speak without ever having learned a language. (4) Adam has a son, Seth, in his own “image and likeness (5:3),” thus implying a literal understanding of the creation of man in “the image and likeness of God” in 1:26-27). On this understanding, God is a guy who looks like Adam. (5) Snakes have to crawl because a talking snake once said the wrong thing (3:14). (6) Man became godlike and learned the difference between good and evil only because Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit (3:22). So God never wanted man to become godlike and develop a conscience to learn the difference between good and evil. (7) Man's disobedience in the Garden is punished by the need to work for a living. Therefore, man was originally intended to live in idle indolence (3:17). My next planned post will argue for a figurative poetic interpretation that might be compatible with evolution.

During the Great Awakening, George Whitefield was preaching to a crowd of about 30,000. A curious skeptic climbed a nearby tree for a better view. As he began to fall under conviction, he put his fingers in his ears so as not to hear the preaching. But soon he was forced to swat away a swarm of flies; and as he did so, he was forced to hear the preaching, was fully convicted, and was gloriously saved. I have posted the Kenneth Miller video that refutes evangelical creationism and, as expected, evangelical posters here have put their fingers in their ears by refusing to watch it, lest they get convicted by Miller's persuasive evidence. So consider this nagging my "swarm of flies" intended to embarrass them into an unexpected flash of integrity that at last launches their journey into the fresh air of honest and open inquiry into the truth of this matter. Their only safety is staying locked in their myopic fundamentalist Ghetto, where they can comfortably restrict themselves to comforting but naive voices that duck the real evidence for human evolution.

"Ken Miller Human Genome 2 -Youtube" This video records 3 brief excerpts from lectures by Dr. Kenneth Miller that demand a reasoned response from evangelical creationists. (1) A powerful recent genetic piece of evidence for human evolution from other primates (2) A primer on how to talk to evangelicals about evolution (3) An overview of how Miller and his fellow scientists refuted the evangelical doctrine of "irreducible complexity" (e. g. Michael Behe) and thus won the trial before a conservative judge that established why evolution needs to be taught in public schools

Notice how Don and David continually pontificate from ignorance without providing detailed arguments and without reading or watching the cited books and videos. And worse, without knowing Hebrew, David disses the New Jerusalem Bible from anti-Catholic prejudice, even though that Bible is renowned for its sensitivty to Hebrew nuance.

Thanks for providing the online source for your claim. Back to this thread's subject, the creation text that is most compatible with evolution is Proverbs 8:30-31 [New Jerusalem Bible]: "I [Wisdom] was beside the master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere on his earth, delighting to be with the children of men." Wisdom personified speaks as if she were a distinct aspect of the Godhead. In Luke 11:49 "Sophia (= Wisdom pesonfied) speaks through Jesus Such speeches by Wisdom inspire the earliest reference to "the Trinity" ("trinas"): "God, God's Word [Christ], and God's Wisdom"(not "the Holy Spirit"--Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch--180 AD). Similarly, the Johannine hymn acclaims Christ as "the Logos," the rational Self-expression of God as opposed to God in His unknowability. Why apparently distinguish Lady Wisdom from the monotheistic God? Wisdom stands for the orderliness of the created and moral order, and so, Her function resembles that of "Mother Nature." Practically speaking, Wisdom represents the rational laws of Nature that God establishes and then leaves these laws to evolve into the universe as we know it. Notice that Wisdom's role in the world's craftsmanship is poetically characterized as divine "play." Though this image does not teach evolution, it is poetically compatible with seemingly random creation experiments, e. g. mass extinctions and evolutionary dead ends, phenomena that are standard aspects of evolution. How this model might be reconciled with a poetic understanding of the Genesis creation story will be the subject of my next planned post.

So why are you ducking my challenge that you document your claim?

the greatest evil in the church is the Domino Theory of Scripture, Jerry Falwell's view that if you can't believe that God created the world in 7 24-hour days, you should reject all of Scripture, including Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Millions of our brightest Christian youth have rejected Christ for precisely this reason. Many evangelicals would rather feel "right" about their simplistic theology than get people saved! Chuck Templeton, founder of Youth for Christ and an evangelistic considered in his day more promising than his close friend Billy Graham fell prey to this evil perspective. Chuck succumbed to the Domino theory, felt intellectually obligated to reject a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation story, and reject his faith in Christ. My fellow Canadian seminarians at Princeton Seminary got tapes of Church's sermons and were brought to tears by how well Chuck preached the Gospel with great power and conviction. Let me add that the most respected defender of evolution in America is a devout Catholic named Dr. Kenneth Miller, who has authored high school and college texts on the subject. It is Dr. Miller who is usually called to defend the teaching of evolution in schools in court cases and he just shreds evangelical creationists. I challenge readers to watch any of his lengthy youtube lectures on evolution, including his videos on how he reconciles evolution with his Christian faith. Few evangelicals are honest enough to get beyond their myopic creationist Ghettos and launch and honest and open inquiry into how experts like Miller defend evolution. In a future post here, the OP will at last get a defense on biblical grounds.

After Peter is saved from execution by a miraculous deliverance from prison, his next decision supports the claim that Mark (also known as "John called Mark") is his biological son. We are told that Peter goes to Mary's house to let them know of his deliverance and that he must immediately leave Jerusalem (Acts 12:12, 17). Mary just happens to be Mark's Mom, the young man Peter calls his "son." So why does Peter go to Mary's house rather than James's house? After all, Jesus' brother James was the leader of the Jerusalem church. Because Mary is Peter's wife and Mark is his son, Peter's top priority is to let his family know he's OK and must immediately leave town. Obviously, he promised to let them know where he was, so that they could eventually be reunited. Thus, Paul's note that Peter took his wife with him on his missionary travels makes sense (1 Corinthians 9:5). After an unsuccessful missionary stint with Paul and Barnabas, Mark joins his "cousin" (so Colossians 4:10) Barnabas on a mission to Cyprus (Acts 15:39). From there Mark, keeping his missionary efforts in the family, joins his Dad Peter on the mission field (1 Peter 5:13). So why didn't Luke explicitly identify Mary as Peter's wife? It is unusual that the house in question is identified as Mary's house rather than her husband's. The answer is Luke's lack of interest in the family relationships of apostolic leadership. Thus, in Luke's repeated references to James, he never identifies James as Jesus' brother and never mentions that Barnabas and Mark are cousins.

You pontificate your preconceptions without addressing the specifics of cited texts. For example, you ignore the text's claims that Apollos was well grounded in the Word and would therefore be well aware of the prophecy of Christ's atoning death in Isaiah 53. His only cited error is his ignorance of Christian baptism. You also ignore the many NT texts that decisively refute OSAS. I"ll gladly bring those to your attention again, if you need this assistance.

The church of my youth tore down the huge old church with its gorgeous stained glass windows and replaced that building with a larger windowless sanctuary, I think, to save money on heating expenses in winter. In doing so, they greatly diminished my sense of a sacred atmosphere in my old church. Last summer I took a 16 day cruise on the American Queen paddlewheel steamship from the top of the Mississippi to New Orleans. Each day we enjoyed shore excursions aboard waiting buses. Tourists particularly appreciated tours of old churches in cities with lovely Tiffany stained glass windows. In seeking a new church, such windows would be a significant factor in my decision on where to worship.

At last, I got you to unwittingly admit your heresy! Like me, millions of evangelical Christians were raised in Christian homes and were taught to believe in Jesus as their Savior as early as they could speak! So they can't recall a time in which they did not accept Jesus and their Savior and Lord who died for their sins. Indeed, from its American inception, evangelical Christian education curricula have taught that, if churches educate their children properly, they should NOT recall the exact time and place when they became born again! It is the gravest of heresies to teach that believers automatically receive the Spirit upon profession of faith. I grew up in a mega-evangelical church. Very few of our youth could point to a time and a place when they got born again and almost none displayed any observable spiritual transformation. So I was not surprised during my seminary years when I learned of a research study of mega-church evangelical pastors who estimated that about 1 third of their REGULAR attenders were NOT truly born again! Your theology encourages this dangerous false sense of entitlement. You remind me of an altar call given by an evangelist in a local Baptist mega-church during which the visiting evangelist bellowed, "If you walk down the aisle and sincerely commit your life to Christ, you could curse God to His face when you leave this church, and you would still be born again!" Since you continually evade Paul's texts that imply the experience of divine power that is essential for true conversion, let me bring you to the most basis point of all. Yes, we are saved by grace through faith. But in both (Hebrew ("amunah") and Greek ("pistis") the word translated "faith" also means "faithfulness." That is precisely why James can ask this rhetorical question, "If someone says he has faith but does not have works, can faith save him (2:14)?" Only the Holy Spirit knows whether one's profession of faith is authentic enough to attract the regenerating work of the Spirit. That work is an experience of transforming divine power, whose reality is often too elusive and subjective for advocates of cheap grace to rightly discern.

You keep ducking the implications of Paul's question: "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you becames believers?" He is in effect asking professed believers whether they have been born again of the Spirit. Being born again is an experience of divine power. Whether someone professing faith in Christ has experienced this power or is ready for it remains the Spirit's discretion. not yours. You keep ducking 1 Corinthians 2:4-5, 4:19-20;, and Galatian 3:3-5, which refute your position. Also, notice that Jesus will reject the born again pretensions of believers who have successfully performed miracles in His name: "On that day many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?" Then I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers (Matthew 7:22-23)!" Here "I never knew you" means "your professed faith in me never really made you born again." "Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test! Famed Christian writer, C. S. Lewis stresses that he doesn't know the exact memoment when the Holy Spirit made him born again. All he knew was that, when he was being drive to Whipsnade Zoo, he didn't believe Jesus was the Son of God, but by the time he arrived at the zoo, he did. But he wasn't thinking about the matter during the ride. He contemplates what may have been subtle nudges in Christ's direction that he failed to recognize prior to this. The point is this: the process wherebv the Spirit empowered him to be born again was elusive and unknown to him. He couldn't identify a time and place, but in retrospect he realized that the Spirit had done His work.